San Diego Safari Park

San Diego has a wonderful Zoo. We lived in San Diego for eleven years, and early on we discovered that the zoo was so big that you could not see everything in one visit. We learned that they offered Zoo Memberships which allowed unlimited entry to the zoo, and we were members for many years. That way we could go in for a few hours on a Sunday afternoon and spend “quality time” with just a few animals. Several hours with the baboons one week, or with the bears, or the big cats, or the little cats. Very enjoyable.

When we arrived in San Diego they had just opened a satellite, then called the San Diego Wild Animal Park, near Escondido. This was a novel type of zoo, with quite large enclosures (30 to 300 acres) that contain large groups of a mixed variety of animal species that normally coexist. One enclosure has animals from the Asian Savanna and another for animals from the African Plains. The animals have lots of space to run, and it is amazing to see a stampede. They have had great success with breeding endangered species. 

According to Wikipedia, in 2010 they re-branded the Wild Animal Park as the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and on our trip we visited the San Diego Zoo Safari Park with our friend Donna. Here are Susan and Donna in front of a waterfall at the Safari Park. 

It was wonderful seeing the animals. Not the same as a Safari in Africa, but the photographs were really good. They have a tram which goes around these enclosures. We enjoyed the tram ride they have which goes around these enclosures, and I got some photos. 

Of course the large predators are segregated in separate enclosures, while smaller, are much larger than at the average zoo, and afford visitors good viewing of these animals. I got a lot of really nice photos of the big cats. 

Donna had been to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park several times before and she highly recommended the Bird Show. It was great! These birds were trained to squawk on command or to fly right over us. 

The Yellow-Billed Hornedbills, which we had seen in South Africa, were trained to hop from outstretched arm to outstretched arm, much to the delight of the volunteers who went on to the stage.

One of the shows they have is called the Cheetah Run. They have a cheetah run along a 100 meter track, chasing a mechanical lure attached to its favorite toy. The cheetah can go from 0 to 70 miles per hour in just 4 seconds. It was pretty amazing! In the wild cheetahs are territorial and mostly solitary. The zookeepers have discovered that cheetahs do much better in captivity the when paired with a friend, a large dog. The dog did the first run down the track (rather slowly, in comparison to the big cat), and then the cat ran at an amazing speed. We were near the finish, and I actually got one picture of the cheetah that was not blurry.

After leaving San Diego, we stopped at Joshua Tree National Park.