Safari? Zoo? Zoofari!

Safari day.

I've heard that term for a few days now. After a little thinking about it, I was going with the idea that "safari" in China is much like zoo in the States. After seeing it, I'm not so sure. Perhaps if I write this well enough, you'll understand why I am still debating that and come up with your own conclusion. If I don't write it well enough, then you'll probably just end up thinking that I'm goofier than what you have already given me credit for. One thing is for sure, Safari in China ROCKS!! Yes, it deserves all caps and two exclamation points. So be it... on with the story.

The Holt families couldn't decide what time to return from safari, 2:30 or 4:30. Some peeps didn't want to stay as long because they figured the kids would need naps and that type of thing. Our Caleb is a little over 4.5 years old at this point and wails like a birthing sasquatch when you put him down for a nap, so for us, no biggie to keep him up throughout the day. We're on bus B, the 4:30 group. Plus, it's a zoo in China for Pete's sake! How many times are you going to have the opportunity to do this?

We arrive at the zoo around 10:30am or so and the first thing you notice is that there is a decent sized amusement park that you drive by on your way into the zoo parking lot. It seems to be closed except for one ride. It's a roller coaster that looked so nasty that I nearly soiled myself and puked just looking at it from the bus. Good Lord, this thing was tall, crazy turns, nearly straight down drops and on top of that, it looked pretty poorly constructed. Not the exact combo I'm looking for in thrill rides, although, I'm sure it delivers on the thrills. Even when I was younger, I would have had the good sense to, at the very least, pause and think about occupying this beast. Note: I had to throw in at least one "occupy" since that's all the rage now.

I'm drifting again... back to the story.

We finally get all of the people and their strollers n' such through the gates. The first thing that you encounter is a flamingo pond. I'm sure that anyone who might still be reading after my roller coaster paragraph is probably now groaning at the fact that I'm talking about a flamingo pond. It's no ordinary exhibit though, and it's not just because I'm seeing all of the local foilage that's different from our mid-western "normal". It's very much set up like what you see in the wild if you were to erase the gaudy wooden fence and the mostly white group of on-lookers from the scene. Very impressive start to things.

Caleb thought so too! His eyes were glued to these birds and when I turned to walk away from them to move on to the next animal exhibit, he tried his best to publicly flog me. It occurred to me that he has likely never seen anything like this in his 4.5 years and I should probably keep that in mind the rest of the day as he's trying to beat me silly.

I should also mention at this point, that I'm wearing one of those harness things that tie up over your shoulder and around the kiddo so they're in somewhat of a pouch. It's an effort to save the back some as he often wants me to carry him. I know the name of this thing but I don't know how to spell it because people always think I'm talking about the alcoholic drink of the same name, mai tai's. I'm guessing it's My Tie, but I really have no clue. Here's about the best photo we have of him in it. Looking at the photo now, he doesn't look all that comfy...
Again... I drift.

Next we see some decent sized water tanks. There are a couple of Green Sea Turtles in there plus some type of sea lion or something swimming around the turtles. I didn't have time to look for a sign because of the 4.5 year old punches being landed at various spots on my face as I went from above the water level to below. Caleb was trying to keep track of the sea lion and whatever I did to assist was wrong and I paid. We're working on the hitting (and kicking, scratching, glasses grabbing and biting). Off we go.

Up next? Asian elephants. Probably 8 or so of them. There are some Chinese dudes out walking around with the them trying to stir them up for us pasty- faced on-lookers! Nice fellows! He is amazed at the elephants as well and I think he's starting to get the idea that if we leave one animals area, there's quite likely another animal coming up. No beatings as we left the elephants.

Pandas are next. NOW we're are getting somewhere. These things are amazing. Their fang teeth are about as big as my thumb and the lazy critters are just kicking back and eating full mature stalks of bamboo which sound a lot like what I would imagine human bones crunching... not that I was thinking about that with the panda 6 feet away.


I'm not really sure how many pandas they had, but I would guess maybe 10 or so? Pretty impressive. A couple inside, most of them outside in yet another impressive habitat.


The Chinese are a crafty bunch not only in manufacturing, but in marketing as well. You see, there is no way to get out of the large panda exhibit without exiting through the panda gift shop. Yep, a gift shop bigger than your local Subway sammy shop and it's nothing but panda crap. Suckers that we are, both boys are now the proud owners of some plush pandas.
I really have no idea what came next at this point. We saw so many animals and walked quite the impressive distance (made possible by my daily portions of bacon and sausage, no doubt!) so it's a bit of blur at this point. We were going through the zoofari with Liena's family so Robby and her are having a great time. Caleb is just simply amazed.

At the giraffes, they sell bunches of leafy twigs that you can feed to the beasts. Robby and Liena were happily feeding them but Caleb wasn't having any of that noise!


He was back in the hut where they sell them, barking out commands and directing traffic from a more than safe distance. He was out of his pouch thingymabob at this time so I tried to coax him closer a few times but to no avail.
Again, this is all new to him so I don't blame or mock for that kind of fear. Heck, put a spider on me and I'll wet myself, so I won't be pressuring anybody into anything when it comes to critter fears.

The tigers were another thing that were so captivating. They had one good sized pen with a large glass wall that contained 6 tigers, if memory serves. There were white tigers mixed in with your more traditional orange variety. The thing about them was that they were playing (I HOPE!!!) with each other. Pouncing, sneaking up on one another, chasing, you name it. All of them were very active which makes me wonder what, if any, nasty things we do to the big cats in the States. Perhaps it's our climate that makes them lazy or if they just adapt to our American culture.

There were some white tigers in another more natural habitat. It was built into the side of a large hill and probably used up 3 acres of the zoofari land. Too hard to explain correctly so I won't try.

There were more tigers that were isolated and in glass enclosures that you can walk right up too. One of them was up pacing the glass eye-balling all of the little kids that were standing there. Liena, who is not afraid of anything was staring this big mama down and didn't flinch. Caleb on the other hand was heading for higher ground.

I'm thinking these last couple of tigers in isolation may have been recent mommas because they had a little building where there were some very recent, recent, and not so recent baby tigers. They were loud! At the end of the row were two small dogs... I looked for collars and didn't see any so I'm wondering if they may have been tiger food for later. You know, the thrill of the hunt type of thing?

Speaking of food, we stopped to get a bite to eat after the tigers. while we were eating, we heard big whoops of Chinese joy at the tiger pen I first spoke of. Upon closer inspection, there was a dude up on the roof of the exhibit holding a long pole with some type of dead critter on it. He would hold it down towards the tigers, yet above the water and the tigers would stand on their haunches (sp?? I've never tried to spell that before...) and then leap in the air, grabbing the dead critter in their mouth as they plunge into the water below. Very impressive show. There were several observations from viewing that, not the least of which is how much water tiger fur can hold! Again, I can't explain it to do it justice, but tigers have a LOT of fur!

Other animals we see, in no specific order, monkeys (many different species), deer, zebras, hippos, rhinos, bears (couple of species), lions, apes, rams, peacocks and other wild birds roaming around, and probably dozens more that I forget at this time.

Another thing worth mentioning was the bubble wall in the koala area. Robby discovered what I'm guessing 99% of the people walk by and never notice. There are bubbles the size of my head, maybe even bigger projected on the wall. He went up and blew at them like kids would blow at real bubbles. The odd thing is, they responded. They floated up the wall! Everybody else had moved on and here's my boy hunched over blowing at a wall. I figured after 6+ years with me, he had probably lost it so I went back to get him. He explained to me what was going on so I tried it. I just used my hand to slap at the bubbles. Sure enough, I had hit them from the side so they went over sideways to the area Rob was standing by. I hit them from below and they would go up. Crash into each other and they would squish a little bit before changing their trajectory in a convincing manner. I'm sure that to the video gaming crowd, this isn't all that amazing, but for us folks who still have land line phones and only trac phones, it was pretty mezmorizing stuff. Okay, I'm a simpleton...
Here's a photo to give you a better idea than my feable description.



We decided to take the train ride at the recommendation of Liena's family who adopted her two years ago and did this very thing then. It was worth it for a couple of reasons; 1. the animals and scenery were stunning and 2. I had made Caleb pause for a potty break prior to getting on the train and he was majorly honked off at me for it. Therefore he spent the next 1/2 hour or so being Mommas boy while he simmered in his juices. Momma liked the time with him.

The train ride takes you through various "countries". Africa, the U.S.A, and a few others. Some parts, like the bears, wolves, tigers, lions and other predators were pretty safely secured from the train, but other areas, like camels, giraffes and zebras, rams and so on were able to come right up to the train if they so chose. Thankfully, we survived the entire ride without incident.

Some of the highlights of the train ride were when more crazy Chinese dudes threw dead critters to the bears making them stand on their hind legs and caused the wolves to howl. Again, very active animals compared to what we're used to in the U.S.

The zoofari wrapped up with a heap of tired humans piling onto a bus yet again. Robby and Caleb made it about 3 miles on the highway before they conked out.

Our otherwise wonderful day was dimmed a bit on the ride home. It seems one of the families who left on the 2:30 bus, had to detour to the hospital on the way back to the hotel. The little girl they're adopting was running a fever and had some other issues that were going to delay that families return home trip. We found out this morning that it sounds as if all is well and they should be able to return to the U.S. this weekend as planned.

As great as the people are that we've met on this trip, and they've nearly all been great, I can't wait to get home to see you all and show off little Caleb.

2 days and counting!

Oh, and one last thing. The Chinese made great efforts to update their signage to include English before the Beijing olmpics. Most of the time they get it right, some times they don't:


I failed to take a photo of the food box on the last airplane ride that got us to Guangzhou, but the slogan on the front of the box read, "Welcome, have fun. Please take plane with you!".

Not sure what they were going for with it, but it does provide some much needed entertainment from time to time.