As you already know from my previous post, I had a pleasure of visiting San Antonio recently. On my way back to Houston I decided to stop by one of the biggest San Antonio attractions, the safari ranch. So today I am going to tell you about my fascinating (just kidding) adventures (kidding again) at the Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch. The park covers an area of 450 acres and is home to more than 500 animals, which the visitors have the opportunity to see, feed, and even touch without leaving the comfort of their cars. Obviously, I am not going to show you the pictures of all of the Safari residents. First of all, I am not crazy, and second of all, I simply have not seen that many animals in the park even though I drove around the premises twice. Thank you, marketers, for misleading the public with these kinds of statements! Regardless of the exact number of animals in the park, it was an interesting experience. Without further ado, here are the photos of the animals that did make it into the lens of my camera.

The highlight of the trip to Safari were the encounters with the ostrich and llama. It was fascinating how gentle llama was when it was eating the food from our hands. It was rather surprising, given that most of the animals would charge at your hand holding the food as if they haven’t eaten in weeks. I seriously thought that I would leave this park with one of my hands missing and I actually made peace with that idea. The animals that were notorious for being rude and aggressive when it came down to food were the ostriches. We as people could learn from their rudeness. They would attack the bag of food and make threatening noises when you would try to get the bag inside of the car. Surprisingly enough, the ostrich that I got to feed was well behaved. I don’t know if it was genes, a proper upbringing, or the fact that he was not even hungry, but that ostrich ate the food given to him with the dignity of an aristocrat.

Another thing worth mentioning is a petting zoo located on the territory of the Safari. While it might be problematic to spot animals in the actual Safari territory, in the petting zoo you will always find someone to pet and feed. While there is no variety of animals inside of the petting zoo, African Pygmy Goats are very entertaining and do more that enough to keep you busy. As soon as they see you holding the bag with food, they surround you from all sides and start begging for food by bumping their heads into you. From my experience, they seemed to be more excited about eating the bag that contained the food, rather than the food itself. Safari employees must have used a tasty paper when making these bags!