We decided to spend Friday at the Wild Animal Park, which we visited last year. It was only supposed to be 79 degrees today, so much cooler and less humid than last year. We were going to leave early, but instead left around 10 am. You take the metro line 11 for 11 stops, then transfer to line 16 and go 5 stops, but the stops are really far apart on line 16, going through farm land and some towns in between, and there are no free seats on the small train. And everyone is happy to try for a seat. Young people do not give up their seats for anyone. It takes more than 30 minutes to get to the metro stop for the Wild Animal Park. Then you get a taxi and in 5 more minutes you are there.
It cost 130RMB for adults just to get into the zoo part, and 65RMB for kids. It’s about 6.3 RMB per dollar now. We went to rent a covered cycle cart. It’s very hard to tell who is in charge and how to buy one. We “asked” one person who pointed to someone else who pointed to someone else. Two people old us it is a 300 RMB deposit. I thought “oh great, it’s half the price of the sign.” But really they were telling me they were going to give me a tiny cart where 3 of us would try to squeeze our butts onto one bench and only 2 of us would peddle. I think the Chinese try to help people save money. But last year we had the big one and that is what we wanted. It took awhile to convince them of that and find the right person to rent it from. Finally we got the cart and drove to check out where to get on the caged bus that drives through the wild animal locations.
We found it, then drove back to catch the 1pm Russian Circus for 1 hour. It’s was pretty good. They had 6 big horses, one big tiger, and 6 cats and 6 dogs that were all well trained. Don’t worry, the tiger only made a brief appearance in a large container where a woman was put in the container, the container was covered, and when uncovered, the tiger was there.
The cats were well trained to climb and jump onto things including the top of an umbrella and the underside of a long horizontal stick. The dogs did various cute tricks that required lots of balance. I think the animals quite enjoy it. They get treats immediately following each trick.
There were also acrobatic feats which were great.
We drove through and saw lions, tigers, white tigers, cheetahs, wolves, giraffes, zebra, rhinos, hippos, antelope, brown bears and sun bears, all in open grassy areas where the busses drove through. It was very nice to see them. They all looked healthy. The bus feeds them tidbits so they approach the bus.
We arrived rather late so could not ride the elephants, but we did feed the elephants and zebras, which was really nice.
