The Elephant Sanctuary

Last Saturday we all visited the Elephant Sanctuary.


The girls and I hanging out with the elephants.
First we all got to brush and pet the elephants.



...Then we walked, trunk in hand, with the elephants....


We got to see a little demo of everything the elephants could do. Notice this guy's trick of standing on 2 legs.

Even Lillie loved seeing and hearing about the elephants. She was smiling and laughing and everyone, even our guide, thought it was funny.

Isabel wanted to play with our guide's walking stick. She thought she was a ninja!

Pat learning about elephants.... from head...
to toe.....
...to tail!


Above is Pat getting a wet elephant kiss....I opted out of that one.
Isabel and I learned about the elephants too.

You could even ride them if you wanted.
Pat and Is checking out more elephants.

Then we got to feed them. This guy looks hungry!
See ya later! We had a great day feeding, walking, touching and hanging out with the South African elephants!

Lions and Tigers and Rhinos Oh My!!

Last weekend we took the girls to the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve. It was about a 30 or 40 min drive from our house. Isabel is packed in and ready to go.
When we all got there we had to wait in a slow line of about 5 or 6 cars so we let Isabel "drive."




The above Rhinos are fake or course....you can get close, but not that close.
Above you can see a cape buffalo and the guys with long straight horns are gemsboks. Below are of course ostriches.


I think the above picture looks fake, haha, but it's not. We were sooo close to these animals. There were not fences here. You could just drive around and see what you'd like. Above is another cap buffalo and below is a rhino. The rhino was walking right along side our car. It's a little freaky. If he wanted to he could have rammed our car any second.
Once he turned and started coming toward us I though it was time to drive on...

We took a break for lunch and play!!


Next we went to play with the lion cubs! R30 is about $3.94. So we paid about $4 to play with the cubs, kids under 3 were free.

I loved the white lion cubs.....

Above is a lion biting Pat and below is one nibbling on my arm. If you look at our faces you can tell. It's like a puppy bite, they don't break the skin.



We also played with the serval cubs. Below you can see one sniffing Isabel's butt.

Lillie loved the servals. She just sat right in there with them.

Family shot with a baby serval....

These are teenage white lions. Above you can see just how close they let you get to them. There are no limits here.

Then we checked out a sleeping cheetah (above) and a lounging tiger (below).
That is Eddie, the cheetah. (below)You can race him in you'd like. He's not on a leash when you're running with him, but he is running after some meat to keep him on course... if you know what I mean.

I thought these guys (wildebeests) looked like they were in a football huddle.


On our way out we saw some more rhinos...Mommy and baby getting a drink. How cute!
On our trip we also saw some random creepy birds, snakes and some hyaenas!! It was a very interesting trip over all and the girls loved it.