African Lions Safari

A new school means a new schedule of year-end school trips. Since the girls "new" school is not as large as their old school they are only divided into two seconds: Grade 1-4 and Grade 5-7. This meant both girls went to the same place this year. Unfortunately they were a bit disappointed that it was a place they had already gone to at their old school. I told them they could just stay home for the day then, that they didn't have to go with ...but I guess it wasn't that terrible of a deal seeing as they still wanted to go.

This year they went to African Lions Safari (the same place I went with Rebecca last year). We had nice weather for the day. Unfortunately the day was not long enough - especially compared to last year. Since we live further away now we lose more time with driving. While we still arrived at the same time (our school starts earlier, and the park doesn't open until 10am anyways), we had to leave much earlier as we had to be back by 4:30 (or was it 4? I can't remember, just remember that it was very rushed the whole day and there wasn't much relax and enjoy time ... a longer day would have been nicer). This meant we did not have time to see all the shows, but we did manage to see the best one - the Elephant Show. We missed the Parrot Show, which is also very nice. The kids only had about half an hour to play in the splash pad area - not near enough for their liking. Seemed they just go in and they had to get ready to go. It was a warm day so the air conditioned bus tour was a nice relief from the heat. I think as adults we enjoy it more then the kids as we soak up all the information they tell us and are just amazed by the characters of the various animals. The kids are too busy talking, making noise, shouting and looking around to even listen to the "boring" tour guide.

I debated whether to take the camera with this year since we were just there last year, but I just can't seem to leave my camera behind for such things and so I dragged it along for the day and took a few photos.

Marietta at the petting zoo.

















Marietta found a baby goat at the petting zoo. A few seconds later she was told to put it down ... it's a petting zoo, not a holding zoo :(























Kids still love those balls. I remember loving them as a kid.

















Our groups - Laura L and I spent the day together so the kids in our group could be together.























And then the animal pictures

Reindeer ... funny, until last year I didn't realize there was actually such an animal as a reindeer but thought it was just a Santa story. I was thankful to find out I wasn't the only one who thought the same. This might have something to do with the fact that it is also called a caribou in North America - not that I knew what a caribou looked like. Now I do!
















The fun baboons that the kids love to watch when we take the bus through the grounds. A coupe of them decided to climb up the front of the bus too, much to the kids glee.
























Ostrich - while it is not true that ostriches bury their heads in the sand, there is much to be said about their lack of brains. This ostrich was peeking at the truck ... apparently they like to do this.

















This one decided it would be more fun to peck at the bus and so it wandered over and began pecking at the windows. Last year when we went through the grounds a couple of them were standing in the middle of the road ... and they decided they were not going to move.






















Since I had lots of other animal pictures on my blog post last year I won't bother doing the same again this time. Except for a few more from the Elephant Show since it was such a good show.


Showing his height and strength.






















Playing basketball

















Painting

















The weather was great, it was a nice day ... the kids were tired at the end of the day and had a good time.