Wild Animals!

Today we visited the Safari Park in Guangzhou.  We were not even aware this park existed last time we were here, but have heard many things about it since then and hoped we'd get to go.  It is full of wild animals from all over the world and the exhibits are constructed in such a way as to get you as close as possible to the animal without putting you in harm's way.  

This part of the park was like an actual safari.  Since we didn't bring our cars to China in our suitcases, we rode the park train through the exhibit.  But, it was fun to watch the animals go up to the cars.  Almost all the cars that go through with sunroofs have kids heads sticking out them!  Not surprisingly, even though there are signs posted not to feed the animals.....what do you think all those car people were doing?  Yep, feeding the animals.  I saw camels stick their heads in people's cars to eat french fries! I'm pretty sure french fries are not in a camels natural diet! 

 Here we saw deer, camels, mountain goats, zebras, giraffe...

Peacocks....

And the very rare Asher!  Just as wild as any animal in the park....please don't feed or provoke him!

Rhinos, up close and personal.

No thanks, let's move along!

These lions are waiting.  There is a man throwing raw meat at them from a station near the road.

Ahhh, who feed the wild animal???  Didn't I warn you!

And what trip to the zoo would be complete without feeding the giraffes and watching elephants play basketball?!?!

And jump rope with a Chinese Clown?

And when visiting a zoo in China, be sure to visit the the most important exhibits.....and my favorite ones - The beautiful Panda and the charming......

Asher exhibit!  Very rare and currently only seen in China!

We also had the chance to see tigers.  Now, I've seen many tigers in many other zoos.  But I they are usually pacing or sleeping when I see them in America. 

In China they don't believe in such laziness!  They feed them raw meat dangling on wires to get them to jump and climb for an audience.  I don't know if this is considered cruel, but it was sure interesting to watch.  And, they did get the meat.....they just had to catch it first!

Last, but not least, we stopped by to get one last peek at The Wild Asher....

But oh!  Who provoked him?  Didn't I warn you not to do that?

Don't worry, Asher was not hurt in the making of this blog!  His daddy was.  Asher decided that to show his thanks to Baba for bringing him to the zoo and carrying him most of the day, he was give him a swift kick to the shin.  That business resulted in Asher going into time-out.....followed closely by a melt-down.....which lead to us being on display at the zoo as many Chinese folk stopped to stare and wonder why these Americans were being so cruel.  Eventually our guide, Connie, came to our aid and with some quick words had Asher's crying stopped and him on his feet ready to go.  What did she say to him?  No idea, but it worked.  He dried it up and we left the park in good spirits! 

It was super fun and we really enjoyed our boy at the park.  We got some good bonding time in a he didn't escape from the safari train, so it was a good day all around!

I'll leave you with this group picture of the Americans on display at the zoo.  The Chinese were quite proud of this exhibit.  They even took pictures!  This is 7 families from our group {one family didn't come} with a total of 11 Chinese children present.  Obviously, 7 of them are newly adopted.  There were no double adoptions on this trip! There are 8 families in our group and between us all, there are a total of 19 adopted children, 18 of them are Chinese!