Saturday we made a trip to Tel Aviv to visit the African Safari Park/Zoological Center. I had heard about this place and it sounded very interesting. You drive through the first part of the safari with wild animals roaming the fields around you, then enter the zoo where you park your car and walk around the exhibits and then get in your car and finish your trip through the park with animals all around you again. It was the most amazing zoo experience I have ever had. I was wondering if we would actually be able to see any cool animals on the driving part. We hadn't even gotten to the first corner and there was an ostrich coming up the the cars looking for food. The signs clearly say "Don't feed the animals" but apparently this is one of those "suggestive rules" the Israelis and tourists don't like to follow. About 50 meters away we saw some Rhinos laying in the shade next to antelope and zebras. We passed some hippos sleeping in the water... we almost thought they were rocks that the birds were standing on in the middle of the river but we waited long enough to see a couple come up for air. There were lots of interesting birds too- flamingos, pelicans, cranes, roosters. One of the Antelope came up to our car, again looking for food. Once we reached the zoo area we parked the car and went inside. Lots of people were renting golf carts but we chose to walk. Inside the zoo were the normal suspects: Monkeys, Bears, Tigers, Girafes, Elephants, Reptiles, Parrots, Penguins, and Turtles. We also saw Hyeenas, Camels, Lamas, Racoons, Aligators, Crocodiles, and Eagles. I was so excited about my new camera and zoom lens. I think we got some excellent shots! Although I only made it through the monkeys when I got a low battery signal :-( I thought no problem, I'll just use our second spare battery that I charged when we first got here. I changed out the battery and realized it had no juice :-( We aren't sure if it's a bad battery or if it didn't get charged all the way. So I went through over half the park without my camera... I was dying. I guess we will just have to come back. It was definitely worth the entrance fee and was the most interactive zoo I've ever been too. All of the animals were up and about (probably because everybody was feeding them). It was interesting that there weren't very many exhibits with glass windows or thick netting. A lot of the monkeys just had a moat between us and them. The zoo had a lot of animals... something like 15 elephants and 5 Giraffes. They had a petting zoo too, but we didn't go in. We were getting hungry so we sat down by the Turtle family to eat our PB&J sandwiches and chips. On the way out of the park we saw more cool animals roaming the land. There were many varieties of the deer family (Gazelle, Oryz, Impala, Waterbucks, Addax, Nayala and Oryx... I'm just writing these down from the brochure based on the pictures next to them). We also saw a Gnu, Ibex, and the grand finale were the lions who were actually separated from the rest of the animals for obvious reasons. Just before we got there I looked in the distance and saw the lions were wrestling. They only let a few cars in at a time through this area, so they had calmed down and were resting in the shade by the time we reached them. I noticed they had two gun towers in this area too, to ensure safety of the visitors (and lions). There was just a small electric fence between us and the lions and there was actually an opening where the lions could go around the fence if they wanted to. It was really really cool. In fact, we reached the exit and had a chance to swing through the loop again and we decided to drive the route again to see if we could see anything different. Outside of the safari/zoo was a big public park that we decided to walk through. There were lots of families having BBQs and playing games. It reminded me of blue lake park when I was little (this was a nicer, greener park though). I can hardly wait to go again...
We finished off the day with a nice burger at the "cowboy restaraunt". My neighbors had given me a few restaraunt choices and we had yet to try any of them. Since a McD's burger would have been at least 65 shekels we went for the sit down restaraunt option. It reminded me a little of Outback, we got to throw the peanut shells on the floor :-) Our meal was served with a starter salad- carrots, red peppers, and cabbage in a "pickling" sauce. I tried it, but it was way too salty. Ken made a decent dent in it while I ate the peanuts :-) We had to choose between 200g and 300g burger. Not exactly sure how big that would be so I stuck with the 200g thinking it was probably close to a 1/4 pounder. The burger was not bad... but Ken said mine are better. It was nice not to have to cook after such a long day.
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