Our African/Asian Safari

With a cloudless sky and very warm temperatures (80s) today, we ventured to the African Savannah and the Asian Steppes deep inside the San Diego Zoo Safari Park outside of Escondido, California.  It was a lot of fun and well worth the cost.  

We climbed aboard our safari truck and settled in along with a family of three from Columbia, South America; a young man from Saudi Arabia with his girlfriend from the UK; a family of four from Alberta, Canada; and a family of four (Grandfather, dad, and kids) from Salt Lake City, Utah.  All the children were well behaved, fortunately, and I believe everyone had a good time. The young lady of about 10 from Utah hugged her grandfather at the end of the tour and told him thank you and how much she liked it. One doesn't see that often.  


 Our tour guides, Lee and Adam were very knowledgeable and friendly.  We drove around inside the exhibits of the giraffes, rhinos, deer, sheep, cape buffalo, and various and assorted other species.  We went from Africa to Asia and back again all in two hours.   We got up close and personal with the animals while in the confines of our truck.  The giraffes and rhinos were close enough to touch, but we were instructed several times that touching was a no-no.  We took over 50 photos today trying to get a good one and these are the ones we picked that we thought were the best of the lot.

We encountered these southern white rhinos first as we entered the African Savannah.  There was a herd of six females.  The male was being held in a pen because it was one of the lady rhino's first day here having just arrived from the Albuquerque Zoo.  The keeper who talked with us said she was adjusting quite well.

They really have the most
 beautiful eyelashes!

There are quite a few giraffes in the park but only a few approached the truck for food. We had to try several times in several spots to get the well behaved ones to come and feed.  We spent some time with Leroy - a ten month old who was quite pushy and didn't allow the others to get close.  Lee kept trying to shoo him away but in the end we had to go find another group for feeding and photo ops.  The
reaction of the kids on the tour ran the gamut from "Oh, gross" to "Wow, this is so fun!"  The long tongues and the slobber 
took them by surprise.

Rog was not happy about having giraffe drool all
over his arm!  She knew food was coming.  We had
to remove our hats for fear the giraffes would think
they were lunch!   

This Cape Buffalo was really enjoying his mud bath.  

This little Thompson's gazelle was born yesterday and already following mom all over the park.

This family of one horned rhinos from Asia was truly enjoying the beautiful day.









We had a good time and hated to leave but we had to get home to let our little brown dog out of the RV.  She was very happy to see us!