(guest posting)
We went here a couple of weeks ago. We didn't get our hopes up, however, after one of the embassy drivers let us know it wasn't a SAFARI!!!!!; it was more of an "eh, safari."
We thought we were smart by going there on Shabbat, figuring fewer Israelis would be out and about. We were wrong. We realized that we should have taken advantage of our situation in which the Israelis work on Sundays, but we are off. Oh well...it at least gave us some more insight into Israeli culture.
You may be wondering by now, what is a Safari? Is it an adventure? A zoo? Oh, it's so much more!
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Safari were the wild and loose-with-the-law Israelis there. More about that later.
The Safari begins, like most things in Tel Aviv, with a long line of traffic. You inch slowly forward until you reach the front gate where you are supposed to pay, but when you get there the clerk says he'll "be right back" and proceeds to leave you waiting there for the next 10 minutes. As a token for the inconvenience, he offers to give you the "local" price, for residents of Tel Aviv only. But we ARE residents of Tel Aviv, we protest. He laughs in disbelief, giving us the local price, all the while thinking he's giving us some sort of deal we don't deserve.
For a while the Safari continues, much like before, with a line of slowly moving traffic, and people honking and jockeying for position. You know, you just HAVE to be the first one to see the emu or the zebra who is waiting for you by the side of the road! Animals surround your car, mostly looking for handouts. But it is still amazing to see these wild creatures so up close and personal. (click on the pictures for larger versions).
You pass by rhinos and hippos, flamingos and gazelles. You see zebras and ostriches, and a pen full of deer. And just when you start to think, wow, that was worth the price of admission, you enter a parking area for the "real" zoo, where they have animals more traditionally in enclosures. I have to say the enclosures were quite nice and spacious (except for the bears), and overall the zoo beats the National Zoo, but not the San Diego Zoo, hands down.
Despite the myriad signs instructing otherwise, most Israelis packed with them a variety of fruits and vegetables to give the animals. Parents encouraged their children to climb over security fences and hand over oranges and carrots with no regard for their diets (see pic below). I nearly went ballistic when I saw a young mother give her child a bag of potato chips to give to a monkey. It was horrifying. I do admit (albeit with a considerable amount of guilt) that the sight of a macaque peeling a Jaffa orange was incredibly adorable. For a time, I took solace in the fact that most guests were feeding the zoo inhabitants healthy fresh fruits and vegetables; however, when Michael later struck up a conversation with a zookeeper, he pointed out that too much food is too much food, no matter how healthy it is. The animals don't know when to say when.
notice how the boy has been placed over
the barrier separating people from the cagesHard to see from this pic, but here are two little ones begging for food that was being thrown to them from across a moat.
This rooster was chilling out near and peering into the bear enclosure.
The Safari even had a petting zoo!
Sleeping baby goats are adorable!
So, after the zoo, you get back in your car for more wild safari action. You're supposed to keep your windows rolled up and stay in your car, but since no one else was following the rules, we decided to break the window rule. We did stay in our car, particularly after hearing a story I won't repeat here involving not a lion but a hippo.
Talk about tame...
Um, tickets please?
The last great thing to see at the Safari are the lions. You drive right near them, separated only by an electrified fence, which appeared from our vantage point to have a rather large gap on the side. It's times like these that you remember you're not in Kansas anymore. The lion in the picture here caught a whiff of the gazelle's that had mistakenly entered this area. A park employee in a Subaru positioned his car between the lion and the general direction of the gazelles. I don't think it would have helped much had the lion been sufficiently hungry to test the fence.
All in all, the Safari was a great Saturday outing. However, all zoos tend to make me a little sad. I remind myself that these animals are teaching the zookeepers about how to protect their species in their natural habitat, and that helps a little. I'm also really curious and love animals myself, so the opportunity to see them up close is hard to pass up. I just really wish that someone would enforce the rules at the Safari to keep the animals healthy. I find it frustrating that Israelis don't seem to see a bigger picture in their actions, not just at the zoo but in general. It's like how they'll just stop in the middle of a one-lane, one-way road, like you have nothing better to do than wait till they figure out where they want to go next. I honestly don't believe there's any ill intent...just plain obliviousness. I could go on, of course, but this is about the Safari.
So, please, enjoy the primate video!
