Before we came away, Kathryn told me to bring driving/riding gloves but wouldn’t tell me why. This morning I find out. For my birthday she has booked the most amazing (I’m saying that a lot, but not unjustifiably) day out at a wildlife adventure park on Mauritius. Casela.
Research suggests that we should get there early to avoid the queues, so we’re up and at ’em with the lark… and get there to find two other people in the queue and that the park doesn’t actually open for another 15 minutes.
When it does, we’re off on a shuttle bus to the quad bike adventure where we (well, I, actually with Kathryn riding pillion) get to write a quad bike on an escorted tour through tropical forest.
We see so much! Deer and wild pigs that look like a mini tapirs, a pair of white rhinos, and get to feed zebras and a particularly insistent ostrich.
The views we stop for are awesome and I can’t imagine a better present – but it gets better.
Like I said, the little girl in the Chinese restaurant had her giraffe with her and now it’s time for the real thing. We get to feed a few giraffes! We head for the feeding platform and have our choice of 3 or 4 to feed. We took some stunning pictures and made some wonderful memories.
Then it was time for lunch in their hilltop restaurant with an outstanding view. After lunch, it’s time to go for a walk with lions.
Yes. Really. Alert, untranquilised, with teeth, lions. We walk in a group of around a dozen from all over the world with a white female and a golden male lion. They’re fed whole chickens in front of us and climb trees to get to them.
We each carry a stick which we’re told to keep vertical between us and the lion at all times. A stick. That’s it. All that’s between the lions and their lunch. It’s something I’ll never forget. I pat and stroke the lions and even, despite the proverbial advice, take one by the tail (or is that a tiger?) Wondrous.
Nothing to do afterwards but reward ourselves with a banana split! Such an incredible day.
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