Safari Adventure!

In California, 4th graders are required to study the missions.  And at our school this involves visiting one, writing a report on it, and completing some sort of project.  Ella (with our encouragement) chose to study the mission in Carmel and built a model of it.  Delia (also with our encouragement) picked the mission in Sonoma and will be making a scrap book.  We had a long weekend and were excited to turn this mission assignment into a little getaway.  Upon inspecting the hotels in wine country, though, we were disappointed to learn they were pretty pricey!  But, then we were excited to learn that for just a bit more, we could have a real one-of-a-kind experience just a few miles from Delia's mission.  So, we booked a safari and an overnight at a little-known place called Safari West.  

Safari West is a privately owned property of 400 acres, full of exotic animals.  The owner is from a family that raised exotic animals for Hollywood movies and has maintained a love for collecting African mammals.  His wife is the former curator of the San Francisco Zoo, so together this couple is passionate about breeding the animals for the good of their population and then educating and sharing with the public through a unique safari experience.  

When you stay overnight at Safari West, you stay in a luxury canvas tent.  It has a bathroom and electricity, and the comfy beds are equipped with heated blankets to make your stay super cozy.  The tents are right on the grounds with the animals, so you hear animal sounds all night!  It was a very wet weekend, so we actually mostly just heard rain, which makes the most lovely sound when falling on canvas.  We were fine, and excited even, about staying in a tent, but this far exceeded our expectations.  It was very luxurious.  After our night in the tent, we were served a huge and amazing breakfast too!

Near the tent camp are numerous enclosures full of cool animals to walk around and look at-- tons of different monkeys, duikers, cheetahs, flamingos, our favorite the cute little fennec foxes, and an awesome aviary we could go inside for up-close bird encounters.

We spent a lot of time walking around visiting the animals at all times of day-- the afternoon we arrived, in the dark of night and then again in the morning.  And then it was time to take our 3 hour long safari ride!  A very knowledgeable and articulate guide drives you around the rugged back roads on an army-style Jeep.  With the rain, we were the only ones in our group crazy enough to want that bench on top, so we scored that.  Whenever a new animal is spotted on the safari, the guide stops the Jeep and hops out to give information about it.  This happened often-- the animals were everywhere!

We kicked off this tour with a real bang in the giraffe meadow.  These giraffes are used to the Jeeps rumbling through their land, so we learned quickly that they were FRIENDLY!!!  As soon as our Jeep stopped they started wandering over to check us out.  We were told not to pet them, but we totally could have, they were that close.  Up on top, we were screaming with delight and snapping pictures like crazy.  As we pulled away, Ella even cried some happy tears and said that was coolest thing that has ever happened to her in her whole life.  It was amazing, the highlight of the whole weekend, and completely worth the entire trip out to Safari West.

No other animals came as close to us as the giraffes, which was fine, because the other animals were all things like rhinos, zebras, watusi, wildebeest, various horned antelope, and cape buffalo.  We learned so much and were just thrilled to get such a neat look at these African mammals.  The rain did not seem to deter the animals from being seen and active.  The long drive around the rolling green back hills was very neat too.

Towards the end of our tour, the rain really started to come down.  At first this was just another fun part of the adventure and we laughed about singing "I Bless the Rains Down in Africa", but we got pretty soaked and were glad the tour ended when it did.  And we were REALLY glad that we got to see the giraffes as active and curious about us as they were, because when we went back through their land, they were all hiding from the downpour in the boma.

I'll end this post about an incredible once-in-a-lifetime experience with this funny story.  At one point an ornery ostrich was right in the road we needed to take to exit.  Our guide pulled out her squirt bottle, which is apparently how they get animals in the road to clear off.  This made us giggle, though, as were in a downpour and doubted the ostrich could even feel the spray of the bottle.  We hung there for a bit, waiting for him to move. :)

We would absolutely recommend both the overnight and the the safari trip at Safari West.  Though it looks like a big splurge, you can save a lot by going in the off season (if you're willing to deal with a little rain), and you can remember that staying anywhere else in this part of wine country is not actually going to be that much cheaper.  I think we made some more forever memories on this trip, which is always my favorite kind of investment.