Rhinos are unpredictable creatures, which is why you should never approach them in the wild or depend on them to babysit your pet gazelle. Have a brush with the animal kingdom with this Groupon.
Choose from Three Options
- $24 for a children's wildlife safari (a $49.99 value)
- $29 for a wildlife safari (a $59.99 value)
At the start of each safari, guides reveal the secrets of some of the park's animals—such as differences between horns and antlers, and the different shell shapes of male and female tortoises—before leading groups on a 20-minute walking tour. Guests stroll past pens of African crested porcupines, guinea pigs, and fossa, and can try hand-feeding lemurs for an additional charge. Tours then transfer to four-wheel-drive safari vehicles outfitted with stadium seating to rumble under 400-year-old oak trees, zooming past endangered animals and exotic creatures such as ostriches, rhinos, and zebras. During rides, guests can also hand-feed leaves to giraffes approaching the vehicle. Tours embark twice daily at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
- $75 for a Camel Expedition (a $150 value)
At the end of the standard walking tour, guides teach participants how to climb onto the backs of six dromedary, Bactrian, and tuli camels. During the 60- to 90-minute tour, participants learn to ride the gentle creatures as their camel handlers point out exotic herd animals such as hippopotamuses, llamas, antelopes, and giraffes. At the end of the day, participants can watch the handlers return the camels to their open, grassy pasture.
Giraffe Ranch
The husband and wife owners of Giraffe Ranch wake up each morning to the squawks, chirps, and growls of rhinoceroses, hippos, ostriches, and a menagerie of other exotic animals. After feeding their giraffes, they tend to the cattle and collect eggs from their free-range chickens that cluck across their 47-acre combination of a working organic farm and a wildlife preserve accredited by the Zoological Association of America. Encompassing four ecosystems, the preserve sprawls under 400-year-old oak trees and across native orchards into wetlands filled with nesting sandhill cranes. With the aid of their son, the owners lead tours through habitats for endangered or otherwise extinct African and South American animals, walking past pens of African crested porcupines, guinea pigs, fossa; as well as lemurs that guests can feed by hand or T-shirt cannon. Their tours never follow the same path, instead changing to skirt around grazing goats or to meet a brood of newly hatched baby ostriches.
Not content to simply lead guests on relaxing strolls, guides also load passengers into four-wheel-drive safari trucks—custom built by the owner after vehicles used in Africa—or onto the backs of camels for extended preserve tours that showcase larger game such as Indian rhinoceroses, pygmy hippopotamuses, llamas, and antelopes. Guides also steer tours toward feeding times, encouraging passengers to pass leaves to the preserve's namesake giraffes from the truck. An onsite shop boasts shelves of glass art, plush lemurs and giraffes, and T-shirts—many designed by the owner's wife—alongside handcrafted African decor. Shop staffers also proffer organic fertilizer, organic free-range eggs, and grass-fed beef harvested on the farm.