Great date- Orana Wildlife Park near Christchurch!
Lemur being fed.
This is basically a zoo, which they make as interactive as possible. If you follow the animal feeding schedule (which is quite regimented, with a different animal being fed about every 15-20 minutes), you see pretty much the whole wildlife park, and you learn a lot about each animal. In many cases they are rescue animals (for example the owls in the same area as the kiwi birds have wing injuries and would not survive easily in the wild), and in general seemed to have nice living areas and environments.
Mike being licked by a giraffe!
The tiger has a large piece of meat.
Baby giraffe.
Pictures below: Mike and I paid extra for a special lion feeding. We got to be in a cage on a truck with the animal handlers, who fed the lions through the bars in the cage.
We had lions all around- snarling at each other (!), and jumping on and off the truck, and over the truck (making the whole truck shake). The lions on the top of the cage were even drooling onto us!
You don't really appreciate the mass of lions until you see them fully stretched out or walking above you....
We ran into friends at Orana, who kindly took a photo for us for a different perspective.
Totally worth it. In addition to all the animal feeding highlights, they have a great New Zealand native bird exhibit (and two Kiwi birds- they are a lot larger than I expected! Really about the size of chickens), and they are working on a fun set up in the cheetah area where they have a rope course over a long distance and can tie things to the rope, move the rope at a fast speed and have the cheetahs chase the prize (they did it once during the feeding time, and the cheetah quickly caught the prize and broke the rope).
Great date.
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