Safari and Zoo in Ramat Gan

On Oct 28 Beth, Ann and I went to the Ramat Gan Safari/Zoo.

We took a regular bus that got us within about a mile of the entrance and walked to the entrance.

Near the zoo there were both the usual Israeli partly feral cats and also a lot of roosters.
 
We sat at the entrance for a while waiting for a bus to take us through the safari portion. This is because the animals in the safari portion are potentially dangerous so people who go through the safari section by car are told to keep their window up and no one may go through the safari portion in other than a study vehicle with window protection.  

While we were waiting for the bus, a pretty friendly cat came up to us and even got on my lap for a while. The cat didn't seem to want to bother the roosters and visa versa so I consider image one to be Cat and Rooster BFF.  


The second image shows the kind of animals in the safari section (photo from the Ramat gan Safari website).



After going through the safari area, we arrived at the zoo area. There was a snack store, a gift shop (third image), rest rooms and a golf cart rental place. We rented a golf cart to ride in while we went through the zoo area. 


One of my favorite photos is Beth and a baboon (fourth image).  From the non verbal hints, it looked like Beth was negotiating a contract with the Baboon.



 Like many other zoos, this one had a petting area so people could interact with the more gentle creatures.

The fifth image shows Beth, me and one of the alpacas, interacting.  



Beth took a photo (sixth image) of me with the giraffes. The one on the left is a statue but the others are real (they had about 6 but they weren't all together and near enough for a good photo).

The next photo (seventh image) shows another unlikely combination of creatures. They had bears and peacocks in the same area. There were 3 different species of bears.  Two of them are varieties of the Syrian brown bear which is endangered and being bred in captivity.


The peacock is just to Beth's left.

There is a bear sleeping against the rocks a bit above Beth's left shoulder. You have to click the image a few times to enlarge it. Even then the bear is the same approximate color as the rocks so you have to look closely.

The next photo (eighth image) is another combination of animals. It shows a giant tortoise with a cabbage feast and a rooster. 

After we were finished with the zoo we returned the golf cart and took the bus back to the safari entrance.

The bus went through a double secure area protected by multiple fences. This got us to the lion enclosure (last image is from a site called "Magx" with lots of images of the zoo). This image shows a female lion. Our bus stopped near a little pride of lions. The female lions were on guard and the male lions were sleeping.

We didn't feel like another long walk so we took a cab back to Beth's place after the safari zoo.