Safari Park!

One of the places I wanted to try to go see, but Lonely Planet said you needed a guide to go, was the Safari Park where two tigers live.

Well SRAS must of known we would want to go- so they organized it for us!

It's about 1 to 1.5 hours car ride outside of Vlad. So you need an organized group or to rent a car to get there.

On one side they have bears, an otter, a badger, foxes, raccoons, and wild cats in one enclosure, and birds of prey in the other.

I took a few pictures on this miserably cold November morning of the bears climibg trees, figuring they would be behind cages when we went (foreshadowing).

The Russian guide lectured to us (it sounded like what not to do), but we didn't really understand everything he said, but just shrugged and figured all would be ok, you know cages?

THERE ARE NO CAGES!

THERE ARE BEARS AND FOXES AND WILD CATS AND A VERY FRIENDLY OTTER RUNNING AROUND FREE.

This is the "lean towards the bear for a picture, but really hope they don't charge me" smile!

Suddenly the Americans were joking that we should of paid a bit more attention to that speech....

We couldn't pet the bears, but they were happy and playing and ignoring us. If we had come in April, they would of been litter and you could hold them!

The otter and the badger were very friendly towards the group and kept running towards us and through the group.

HI!!!!

The otter really just wanted out of the cage...

Then you go into the next cage and there are birds of prey. This part was a little sad- they din't have enough room for the size of the birds. I hope they rotated them so they could all fly in the large cage that smaller cages were a part of.







Then we had a quick lunch break, before going to explore the other side.

While we were waiting, the wathogs(?) were making the most pitiful noises ever.

Which we figured out why, once we were in there. Apparently with every tour, they get milk. 

We walked through to see the two tigers, which were in separate cages from each other. I did wonder if the cages had US regulation hights or what the Russian regulation (i know, funny) was...but the tigers were acting like cats too much to care...AKA the were totally just sleeping.

Then on the same side as the tigers, there were.....deer. Cuz that makes sense. I mean the tigers couldn't get to the dear, but still.

This time the deer were anxiously looking at us when we walked in.

We give them food/breadcrumbs.

After the gigantic walk though of deer, with multiple families, we drove back to Vlad. This was actually quicker. I timed it both ways, so it's not just "you think it is quicker on the way back" no it was legitimately quicker on the way back.

Russia.

See you around the globe!