Once we arrived and the hissing/growling (just from Neeks) settled down, Jess and I took off to ZooSafari over in Fasano. ZooSafari has a rather large section of land that you take your own car through to see animals. We're not talking the wild animal park near Roseburg, Oregon either. This one has you driving through an enclosed area with lots of full grown lions (mostly old males that are rather mangy and ill looking), crazy active tigers, bears, zebras, a million hoofed animals (goats, sheep, deer, horses, bulls, etc) and giraffes. You can't forget their herd of giraffes that didn't get to roam free, but could stick their heads in your car windows.
But let's talk cats. Big cats.
While driving through the lion pen we ignored the sign to roll up our windows. The guy operating the fence didn't seem to care and truth be told these looked like grumpy geriatric lions as they laid flopped on the ground growling and grumbling to each other. There were a ton of "simbas" male lions, a few females, and closed off a bunch of lion cubs were playing with their mom, protected from the only 2 young and healthy looking lions in the pen. Seriously, all the kitties appeared to have some sort of eye issue or lumps, to the point we were asking each other if we thought this is where rescued lions came.
Feeling a little sorry for these lions, especially after comparing those to the ones I saw in Kenya, we waited for the gate to close behind us and the next one to open, and we were on to the tigers (after a short detour through emus). As we drove into the tiger pen we saw one coming from the water pool. It looked so much healthier than the lions and content shaking the water from its coat. On the next part of the circle we realized that we were in there with about 8 full grown tigers, 2 other cars, and a park employee in his white jeep. There were tiger babies too and even at the size of a medium dogs they were adorable attacking mom, while 2 other tigers hung out just on the other side of the fence. I'd say it was about this time that we spotted one tiger moving from the upper part of the pen to the pool and another one, opposite side of the road looking like it wanted to play. As we laughed at this huge beast acting the same way our kitties do and snapped some pictures, a tiger came sprinting from behind the car, cutting in front of our stopped car while the tiger who wanted to play on the passenger side of the car got ready to evade it. Talk about panic. These were full grown tigers! AND OUR WINDOWS WERE MOSTLY ROLLED DOWN. The white jeep took no time to speed down to the part of the small loop we were on and most of the tigers ran back up to their pen. What did we do? Made sure those windows were rolled all the way up and made our way to the bears. Seriously. I think it was scarier than when the bull elephant was getting angry while I was in Kenya, in the open land cruiser. I mean I've seen what a bear can do to a car...2 or 3 tigers? Eek.
After that adventure, not much else in the ZooSafari part is worth mentioning...although I did make friends with the ugliest camel ever. Our next stop was to walk into the actual park to see the rest of the animals- like LEMURS!
First stop, just walking around and seeing some primates. And then the lemurs! They were settling in for an afternoon nap. There were lots of signs on their cage too- but I was only sure about the don't touch the animals one. But since this is Italy and people bring food in to feed the animals...you can guess how that went. There was also a sign that said something about the animals have access. To what? Still not sure. I guess it's time to Google Translate that picture.
Second stop, il trenino per il villaggo delle scimmie (the monkey train). Now, way back last June when attending my Hail one of my coworker's had told me about this place. Apart from the trulli houses they said I had to visit ZooSafari because the monkey train was a lot of fun. I'm pretty sure I was told to take food to feed the monkeys too, but that slipped my mind until I saw the sign for this train. Wanting to know exactly how this measured up to the image in my head we utilized our ticket and climbed aboard the caged train and were promptly locked in.
The train rolled forward as since we were facing backwards, the first thing I saw was a man holding a gun. Interesting. Then it started. Monkey screeches. Kids crying. Banging on the roof. Hundreds, I kid you not, of baboons flocked to the train climbing up the wire and standing at the end of the metal pipes in hopes that food would be dropped out. The poor primates staring up at us had me searching the floor for any crumbs that may have been missed and a few pieces of stale bread were passed off to the expectant hands on the other side of the wire. When they realized all the food was gone, the baboons started to walk away, waiting for the next train to hopefully bring a better buffet. As the train rolled out I didn't know what to think other than Only in Italy. Seriously. Could you imagine something like that in the states? More sad for the monkeys than traumatized (although I may need therapy) we were unlocked from the train and walked away still dazed at what had just happened. The little kid was still screaming and crying, just in case you were wondering.
The train dropped us off by the brown bears, polar bears, hippos, rhinos, and lake. The lake had 3 islands, one occupied by lemurs and the tenants of the other 2 were MIA. In walking around the green algae filled "lake" 3 pinnipeds- 2 spotted seals and a huge sea lion made their trek from the center to the shore. We did our best to figure out what was living on the 2nd and 3rd island...we knew it could climb since a rope attached the two. Finally the occupants decided to move- more monkeys! They looked content, but then we started guessing what would happen should one of the sea lions get a little too close to their water front property. Seriously. A bag of coffee to anyone who can tell me where monkeys and seals live in harmony. Then we also go to thinking that salt water really shouldn't have a film of green algae growing on it. Then we go to thinking...it was time to get moving because this was getting too depressing.
Back into the Metrozoo, we rolled back into familiar territory- land of the scimmie. It was our luck that a train was just rolling in so I was able to relive the terror from a bird's eye view that I was already trying to forget. Of course with a view of the entire pen, we spotted a monkey drinking from the water spout, a baby monkey riding the back of its mom while chomping an apple core, and lots of other monkeys just chilling out ignoring the train all together on the remnants of a kids playground- complete with metal slide (ready to burn anyone stupid enough to touch it in the late afternoon sun). We waved to the man with the gun since it seemed like the appropriate thing to do and then were back to the station.
So yeah, lemurs were the highlight of my day. They even made the tortoises (all different kinds, including the kind(s) I want look boring. I mean, what's cooler sounding "my pet lemur...." or "my pet tortoise?" Speaking of pets, if you ever go to this place...skip the birds! I think we get more of a selection of birds at the local pet store. Then again, I did leave feeling like I had just left the pet store after seeing so many types of canaries and finches.
Alright, so before I start sounding like a zoo snob, which you know I sort of am. (Didn't we already establish this with the aquarium post?) I'm going to sign off and go figure out where it's legal to have a lemur as a pet. They are so stinkin' cute!!!!
