Taman Safari

So we had heard RAVE reviews about this place called Taman Safari (Safari Park) from pretty much the second we arrived in Jakarta. It is about an hour and a half away, with no traffic, but usually the traffic is pretty bad. We decided that today would be a great time to go since Ramadan just started and people usually don't go out a ton on the weekends since everyone is fasting and therefore tired. ;-) We also got an early start and arrived just after it opened, so it was a quick drive and not too busy.

Taman Safari is a drive through zoo and also has an amusement park and water park. We didn't even go to the other parks, we just drove through the zoo, and we will definitely be back! It completely lived up to all the hype. I will let the pictures and the video show just how close and amazing it was...you must watch the video!

On the way up they have a bunch of carrot and banana stands to buy food for the animals. It was great, and we had hoards of cute little children around our car and we gave out a bunch of our coins that seem to accumulate ridiculously fast here. They have coins equivalent to 1/2 cent here, so you can imagine. Anyway, the boys loved it, we loved it...it was awesome. Tanner said jokingly that when we waited in the car outside the gate to the Lion area, it felt like we were in Jurassic park. I felt the same after we entered the gate and it closed behind us. It was just us and the lions ... a little disconcerting, but the lions didn't seem to care about us at all, so then it was just fun. One of my favorite things was actually all the HATI-HATI! (Warning!) signs about what could happen if we decided to get out of the car. The only hazard we experienced to being THAT close to the animals was that at one point Clark got totally sneezed on by a zebra, and he burst into tears and wanted to go home. It was pretty nasty, but he recovered...eventually. :-)