Bali Safari & Marine Park – Part 1

I’ve been to Bali ever-so-often but have never gone to the Bali Safari & Marine Park cause they just opened the late 2008/ early 2009.

Although it say Safari and Marine Park, it’s more of the safari and less of the marine. The marine side of things has yet to take off so other then the piranhas you see in the above pictures, a couple of turtles and baby reef sharks, there isn’t much.

The safari part of the park however, is well developed and there are about 400 animals in the 40 hectare park. I don’t remember seeing that many animals but I do know that they have quite a large amount of elephants.

They have included many Balinese architectural elements in the park which I feel makes a nice touch.  They also offer free Balinese dance lessons for visitors on Sundays and Public Holidays.

This safari park like quite a number of zoos out there are pretty commercialized so you can take your photos with many animals close up and they offer elephant and camel rides as well.

The statue behind me is the 9m statue of the Hindu God Ganesha. Which is pretty apt since this is where the elephant have their performances and their bath.

There’s a huge elephant statue and I fit quite nicely at his legs! I’m so small!

Time to head on to look for the real deal at the Kampung Gahjah (Elephant Village).

Kampung Gahjah is a conservatory area for elephants and a lot of the retired forestry or working elephants retire here. You can go for an elephant ride, visit the elephant museum, view their performances and feed some elephants!

I really enjoyed feeding the elephants! They absolutely loved the bananas and are such gentle creatures. With their strength and power, they could easily crush my hands or snatch the bunch of banana from me. Instead they waited for me to pluck out individual bananas and gave a light squeeze as they took them from me.

Next we come to the Komodo Dragons! Komodo dragons are the biggest lizards on earth and can only be found in the wild at Komodo Island National Park, Nusa Tenggara Timur in Indonesia. Since it’s a native Indonesian animal, you can be sure that it is iconic animal to the country.

Komodo dragons can smell a dead prey 9 m away and is able to see up to 300 m away in the day. Komodo dragons possess a venomous bite and their saliva has tens kinds of deadly bacteria making them very scary predators.

Near the Komodo’s lair, is the area where you can go for camel rides. ( My pictures in this area didn’t turn out so unfortunately I have none to share.)

We decided to stop for lunch at the Tasavo Lion Restaurant. It has a really nice enviro

nment but the key feature to this place is that the restaurant is surrounded by a glass panel and the lions den is just across that glass. So essentially, the lions are watching us have our meal.

The lions got me really excited and when I heard there was a “tamed” lioness in the park, I headed straight there after lunch to see her for myself!

Isn’t she a charmer? Lol… I was a tad afraid she’ll suddenly jump up and attack my throat while I was caressing her though. She was happily chewing on chunks of meat the keeper was throwing at her!

As I got braver and more confident (and with the keeper’s encouragement) I went closer to her!

She was really tamed and almost felt like a huge pet dog and extremely affectionate! I love her huge paws!

Following my little lioness encounter, I boarded up the tram for the animal safari adventure. It’s quite similar to the concept we have at the Singapore Night Safari except this one is in the day.

If you look closely to the background of those Rhino pics, you’ll see buildings. Well, that’s the safari park’s hotel! You can literally have animals in you backyard to watch if you stay there!

The safari animals are divided into 3 regions – Indonesia, Africa and India.

As you can see, there are lots of animals and they roam pretty close to the tram route so it was easy to catch sight of them.

See how many of the animals you can name before I continue with Bali Safari post Part 2!