Safari Park Adventure!

Tuesday, July 5th

Today was a “free day” which meant that nothing was on our agenda for the adoption process or tourism. Hooray! As most of you know, I love zoos. However, I haven’t had much luck going to foreign zoos. They are typically quite depressing and the animals all look sad and close to death. I decided to ask the opinion of the members of one of my yahoo groups what they thought of the zoo in Guangzhou. The response was quite mixed but many suggested something called the Safari Park. I decided to try it out. Boy, am I glad we did!

Cameron and I took a taxi from the White Swan Hotel to the Safari Park. I thought that all of my travel experiences were good preparation for trekking to China alone to adopt a toddler. However, today I have decided that the best preparation for this trip was actually Disney World. I am one of those anal Mouseketeers who plans months in advance, including which rides to go on in what order. This methodology has proved quite useful in a country with a population of this magnitude. We got up super early and had breakfast. I carefully selected what items from the buffet I would be taking with us to the park for our lunch. I got a taxi at the exact appropriate time to get us to the park for when the ticket counter opened. I waited in line while carefully entertaining my 2 year old for the ticket distribution.

We were in the park at “rope drop” and while all those silly Chinese who were staring at me and taking pictures were making a beeline for the safari on wheels adventure, I took a sharp left and went straight to the animal nursery. A-MA-ZING! I have never seen baby animals quite like this before. I was completely enthralled. Cameron, as you can see from the first picture, was completely terrified. I started to get a little nervous that it was going to be a LONG day at the Safari Park when he started wailing at the sight of a baby tiger the size of a kitten. After the animal nursery (the sign also said animal kindergarten which I found quite amusing), we headed to Tiger Hill. We saw South China tigers, Siberian tigers, Bengal tigers, Snow tigers. If the tiger has not yet been extinct, we saw it. It was a fabulous exhibit. I didn’t brave the 10 yuan for a bag of nasty meat to throw at the tigers to feed them.

The entire reason for my visit was to see the pandas. I heard that there is one lonely panda that hides under the tree in the way back of his cage at the Guangzhou Zoo but there were many pandas and cubs at the Safari Park. I asked many workers where the pandas were with my map and was able to piece together a string of English phrases after 4 or 5 workers. I learned that the pandas didn’t open until 11. I quickly made it back to the beginning of the Park where all the people who pushed me to get to the Safari on Wheels were now heading to the Tigers.  Cameron and I easily got on the Safari on Wheels with no line and I chose the last seat on the train because I knew he would end up standing up for half of the ride, and I didn’t want to be bothering people. Wow. There’s no other way to describe this safari adventure, but wow! There were animals of every shape and size and they were so close to us. Every type of deer you can imagine, sheep, yaks, camels, swans, bears and then tigers, lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, hippos. Any kind of animal you would ever want to see. I don’t think I will enjoy Disney’s Animal Kingdom Kilimanjaro Safari again after experiencing this adventure. It was worth every penny.

After a 30-40 minute ride at least, we were back inside the walking part of the park and we headed to the pandas. It was now 11:07 and I was quite proud to have seen so many animals before the panda exhibit opened. Cameron at this point was totally enthralled. He preferred the distance that the Safari on Wheels provided and started to get really into looking at all the animals and pointing to them and screaming “Mama! Mama!” every time he would see something new. It was SO FUN.

The panda exhibit was spectacular. I have seen the pandas at the National Zoo in DC but this was definitely the closest I have ever seen them. Cameron dozed off and I was able to gaze at these amazing creatures for 20 minutes uninterrupted. I learned that pandas like cooler weather so their exhibit was air conditioned and inside and there were huge blocks of ice everywhere. I felt like I was in panda heaven. I love to watch the same animal for a long period of time and see what they do. It was so funny to watch one of the pandas strip bamboo and have his huge snack. He was crunching it in pieces like a celery stick and I was so close to him that a piece of bamboo flew right by me. Cameron woke up while I was still mesmerized by the pandas and got to see them too.

Then I discovered his favorite animal, which coincidentally is also mine- elephants. There were so many and we were so close to them. You could even buy bananas to feed them. You had to stand back and throw it to them, so I just watched others do it. Every time I tried to move on to another exhibit, Cameron would have a complete toddler meltdown and point to the elephants indicating that he wanted to stay there. He only half enjoyed the giraffes because he was still annoyed that I took him away from the elephants, but did calm down when he ate lunch and watched the koalas.

I am not a fan of the circus and watching animals do tricks, and I usually get sick to my stomach watching them be forced to do activities to make us ooh and aah so I stayed clear of all the shows. I also skipped the Animal Fairyland which is where all the kiddie rides were. At that point, we had been there for several hours and it was time to take Cameron back to the hotel for a nap. This was such a fun day, and it made me think of Gretchen and Madelyn and dream about all the family adventures we will have when Team Murray is together once again, with an added member!