Vacation 2009 - Day 4

San Diego Wild Animal Park

This park was originally supposed to be only a captive breeding center for the San Diego Zoo. Apparently they parked 23 rhinos in the middle of farmland and turned some heads of the passers by. Sweetie visited the Wild Animal Park in 1974. Her great uncle was a carpenter who actually worked on the construction of the park. That's my attempt at backstory. On to our day...


It was going to be hot today, so we planned accordingly. The first thing we did when we hit the park was zip on down to Heart of Africa for the Journey Into Africa tour. Okay, well we had one stop to see the baby cheetahs, which were adorable. They had long lanky legs and a gray, spotted mohawk that ran all the way down their back (possibly an attempt to mimic the bad-tempered honey badger, although Sweetie doesn't buy it). The trainers were in with them, and the three kittens were licking and biting them and each other. Very cute.


On to the tour. This is a tram that takes you around the 900 acres of open ground where a large number of animals are kept. We saw black rhinos, cheetahs, ostriches, zebras, sables, cape buffaloes, wildebeest, many different types of antelope (eland, gemsbok, springbok, gerenuk) that I can't hope to keep straight, and a white rhino. Oh, and giraffes. The animals were already pretty motionless. It was hot. About 95. We took a long walk around to see a lot of fowl - flamingos, bustards, storks, hornbill, an active secretary bird, egyptian and gray vultures - and also some more animals - warthogs, gerenuk, duiker, okapi, gazelles, eland and bontebok. We saw the lions (very sleepy), and then decided it was time to rehydrate and have some lunch.


Afterwards, we went up to see the gorillas and then it was off to the Petting Kraal. They have a number of gazelle type critters that kids can go in and pet. They are remarkably habituated to youngsters running up to them, getting hands in their face, poking screaming, etc. I was surprised no one got kicked or bitten. Thing 2 had a great time. He found some leaves from their lunch and was feeding two of them.


We walked up the hill to the elephant pen and were rewarded by the herd of elephants being elephants. There was one little baby, three or four young, and then five or six adults. They wandered around, then some took mud baths in a puddle while others took dust baths. The baby nursed. Others scratched against fences, rocks and each other. A youngster ran up to an adult and greeter her with trunk rubbing. One peed. Very elephanty. At this point the Things were getting pretty tired, but we were very close to the condors, which Sweetie wanted to see, so we trudged across one more hot wooden walkway to see the lovelies.


Now it was time to cool down. We rode on the carousel, which Thing2 was quite nervous about before it started. Thing 1 and I went in a Dino-4D ride which was much more 4D than the Legoland variety. The seats threw you around every which way while the 3D movie played. Thing 2 thought that would be too scary, so he didn't go, and in fact it was a little too scary for Thing 1. It was the end of a long, hot day. We did a little shopping, had a snack, and then headed back to the hotel for a well-deserved swim.