Day 7 - Lion Country Safari, West Palm Beach (mileage 3 miles, 2 laps of the park!)

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Friday the 13th was thankfully not a day of disasters although parked up on the grass, surrounded by woods and a bit of standing water in hot and steamy conditions bought the little biting insects out again last night. This particular lot seemed to be attracted by Deet rather than repelled so after breakfast the spotty legged twins waved goodbye to next doors squawking parrots (and kids) and headed off on foot along the track from the KOA to the entrance of the safari park only a couple of hundred yards away.

Being a Friday, and the 'off season' meant there was virtually no one around and we had the place to ourselves. Rather than take a 30 foot RV around the park to be savaged by rhinos and lions, we were advised by the KOA office to hire a car at the park and this was excellent advice. The park have a fleet of zebra striped cars and minibuses for hire and after a quick form filling exercise and only a $10.60 hire fee we were the proud owners of a zebra striped estate car for the day!

Not quite the Longleat or Woburn safari park, it was nevertheless interesting to see how its done 'US style' and also was something to do for a day...The drive through enclosures house just about every type of deer and antelope you can imagine and they also seem to have the biggest collection of ostriches Spread across every corner of the park with ostriches appearing in every drive through enclosure, slightly against the theory of the park layout where each section is meant to represent a different part of the world. Apparently ostriches live in Africa, Asia, South America and everywhere else in between. There was also an impressive collection of giant tortoises wandering around like mibile speed humps as well.

At one point on our trip round we entered into a standoff with an ostrich in the middle of the road, That we thought was never going to end! But in the end it appeared his sole intent was to eat the squashed insects off the windscreen and once it was clean, we were able to proceed on our way.

Threats of danger and death and the need to keep windows closed on the signage around the lion enclosure were a bit over the top when it emerged you were driving on a fenced off road around an enclosure where the lions were all fenced in anyway! In addition as it was soooo hot today there was more danger posed by the ostrich than the 10 dead lumps of lion sleeping under a tree. The same could be said for the three chimpanzee groups isolated on islands in a lake who were also fast asleep in the shade.

The one really impressive aspect of the tour was a large drive through enclosure housing rhino and zebra. At Longleat the 3-4 rhinos are carefully monitored and shepherded away from cars by tractors when they get close. Here more than 10 rhinos and a baby seemed to have free run with no one monitoring them which meant you could get really close. A battered old Ford Taurus estate feels like its made of tissue paper when confronted with 4-5 inquisitive rhinos...we thought that maybe the zebra stripes were similar to some of the staff vehicles as it did seem to attract them. Having shot off hundreds of photos of baby rhinos and zebra we travelled through the last enclosure with the large giraffe herd and into the rest of the park.

In the main area were all the usual entertainment stations you'd expect at tourist attraction like this, restaurants, amusements, rides, gift shops, petting zoo and a small water park/play area for the kids. There were also a number of animal feeding opportunities including budgies?!?! Giraffes (very cool), camels, fish and other stuff. If we'd had kids it could have easily spent a day there but by 14-00 we were ready to leave..as we had the car, we did one more quick loop around the park but with lions, chimps and most the other animals deep into afternoon siesta time it was time to retire.

Having realised that despite being in West Palm Beach, we were 15 miles from the beach, we spent the rest of the afternoon in the sun at the KOA pool which was very clean and welcoming after a long sweaty safari (having showered first of course!) By the evening neither of us had the energy or inclination to cook so we consulted the office who provided the menu for the local ribs and steak 'shack' and 45 mins later we had the full contents of an American diner menu delivered to our RV with enough side dishes and condiments to keep an army going for a year!

After dinner it was then time to batten down the hatches, defumigate the place and settle down to an evening of more Xfactor and Shark Tank (dragons den US style) washed down with a cheeky red or two...Tomorrow we hit the Florida Keys and meet up with the family..

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Comments

[Tisha]

Ahhhh
Love all the photos especially the baby zebra..............