Friday March 27 - Safari Park

Today we rented a car and a driver from the brother-in-law of my contact at our vendor. Don't know if I got a "deal" or not, and don't really care as the car including driver was $40 for the full day. We'll also be using the same company and driver tomorrow.

The driver arrives and introduces himself as "Eddie" and explains that his English is "not so good". I'm sure it will be far more sufficient than our needs will require - I mean, we're not planning a diplomatic dinner, just a tour of the area. As long as he knows "Safari Park", "Hotel", "Toilet", "Dinner", etc, we'll be fine.

When I head Bali had a Safari Park, I was anticipating something similar to the one I experienced in Jakarta - drive through with your own car, close interactions with the animals, etc. One of my colleagues - the same one who recommended the hotel - also had indicated that the Safari Park in Bali was superior to the one in Jakarta. On this, I will have to respectfully disagree - at least from an adult experience. I did not visit the "theme park" area of the Safari Park in Jakarta, so the water park portion in Bali could quite easily have tipped the scales for him to favor the Bali version.

Safari Park was, by far, the smallest zoo I've ever been to. Probably half the size of the Phoenix zoo and smaller still than John Ball Park in Grand Rapids. Unlike both of those zoos, and like Jakarta, it had animal interactions with unlikely animals - a full grown lion, a full grown tiger, full grown leopard and a baby orangutan. I took my picture with the lion, my mother-in-law with the tiger, and my daughter and wife with the orangutan - though my daughter wasn't so sure she enjoyed it at the time.

Whereas the Jakarta park allows you to drive your own car the Bali park has a bus that you board and they drive you among the animals. You'll still get closer to the animals than you will in most zoos in the US, but it wasn't the same as the Jakarta Safari Park. We'll have to do that when we return.

One of the highlights of the visit was the interactions with the elephants. My daughter and I bought some carrots that we fed to an elephant and my daughter pet the sleeping elephant baby. We also attended an elephant show in which I volunteered to go up on stage and be a participant. My role, along with four other volunteers, was to lie on the ground as the elephant walked over us, pretending to trip at each person. While I was laying on the ground, and the elephant started walking towards us, I heard my daughter yell from the audience: "Be careful daddy, the elephant is going to get you!".

After the elephant finished tripping over us, she took a flowered lei and placed it around our necks with her trunk. When it was all over, as I walked back to my seat, my daughter yelled "Great job daddy!" - she was quite proud that I would face the elephant.

When we finished with the zoo, we went to the water park. The water park had around 7 0r 8 water slides varying in size from one you would see by a back yard swimming pool to one half the size you would see at Sun Splash, Wet 'n' Wild, Splash, or Big Sur (depending on what state you are in and reading this). Initially, my daughter was hesitant to ride any but the small ones. Mommy and daddy did not have their swimsuits, so one would walk with her to the top, and the other would stand in the knee-deep water at the bottom to catch her. Eventually, the small ones got boring for me, so I decided it was time for her to be brave. We started with a tunnel slide that had two twists. She screamed bloody murder when I put her in the top of slide, and pushed her. By the time she reached the bottom 5 seconds later she was screaming with laughter and demanding to go again. We did this a while, eventually using all of the slides from the small section.

After a few moments letting her run and swim in the shallow pool, I asked if she wanted to try the big one. She said yes. So, we walked the four flights of stairs to the top and mommy stood at the bottom. This was a big one. It had four turns and probably dropped 40 feet - at least 30 feet. When we got to the top, she wasn't sure she wanted to go down anymore. I looked at her and said "you brought me all the way up here, you are going to give it a try". Before she could object, I pushed her. She loved every minute of it and, after a few more times of us helping her, she decided we were an unnecessary part of the equation and climbed to the top by herself, climbed into the slide and slid down on her own!

On the way home from the park, we stopped at a grocery store to buy some more suntan lotion, water, and a few bits of food to snack on. This was, and always is, much cheaper than buying things at the restaurant or the hotel. It is also why I prefer to have a driver than to be on a tour bus. I first learned this when I took a cruise by myself for spring break one year in college. When I disembarked in Barbados, I rented a taxi for the day and saw the whole island for 1/3 the price it would have cost me for a tour to see half the island - and I got to go at my own pace.

In the evening, we left my daughter with Grandma and my wife and I went and had a nice, quiet dinner by the beach. We still hit the sack by 9 PM and were fast asleep shortly thereafter.