Port Lympne Bear Lodge Glamping Day 2

So day 2 of our little weekend break and started the day by heading back to Port Lympne to go on the Safari tour which we had missed on the Saturday. We rode in the back of an open sided lorry trailer for an hour long safari around part of the zoo which is not accessible by foot. The safari was pretty amazing and very informative. We managed to get some real close up encounters with many different types of animals. Probably the highlight of the safari was seeing the giraffes of which there must have been easily 9+ just roaming out in the wild.

Once we had completed our very hilly and bumpy safari we took a drive over to the sister zoo of Howletts. This zoo is much smaller than Port Lympe and definitely not as hilly - although the kids were all still complaining about their feet and legs due to the amount of walking done on day 1. 

Howlett's has a really impressive elephant enclosure, more wild cats, more rhinos, giant anteaters, European bison and LOTS of monkeys (especially Java monkeys which are apparently endangered yet appear in every other cage at Howlett's). Howlett's also has lots of large models of ice age animals to give you an idea of animals which once roamed the planet many, many years ago.

The weather wasn't quite as nice as day 1 and we had to take shelter at lunchtime to let a storm blow over, then on the way home the weather turned again. Overall though we had an amazing weekend away and all seemed to thoroughly enjoy our short glamping trip to Kent.

Teasing the kids with a golf kart whilst we wait for our safari tour.

Like on a school trip we were the naughty ones sitting at the back of the lorry.

Brandon enjoying the safari and trying to avoid photo's.

Holly and Tina sitting opposite me and Josh.

Nicky had the pleasure of Brandon's company on the safari.

More white rhino's. I learnt that white was translated for wide as they have a wide mouth (nothing to do with their colour).

More rhino.

And even closer to a rhino.

Amazing creatures that almost seem prehistoric.

Eat, sleep, roll in mud, repeat.

An ostrich out on the safari.

A beautiful deer resting in the long grasslands.

Many different species of deer, antelope, gazelle etc on the safari.

At one point we though we would only see the giraffes from a distant.

But we did manage to see some closer and they are amazing animals.

More giraffe.

Difficult to count how many their were as they were spread out a lot.

Another stunning photo from the safari.

A very rare albino deer.

A zebra out grazing in the grasslands.

Some views across the safari.

So much better to see these animals not caged up.

Very unusual facial markings.

It may not be an African safari, but it was still very enjoyable.

Nice looking beard.

Just casually walking alongside our safari lorry.

And the safari draws to an end back at the baboon enclosure.

They seemed to follow the lorry up the road.

At Howlett's one of the first animals we saw was another tiger.

Some sort of hog type animal which I can't remember the name of.

The elephant enclosure was massive and opened out onto some large fields.

Another lion.

The very unusual giant anteater.

Watching some of the elephants splashing around in a pool.

More of the elephants.

And more.

Beautiful colours and stripes. Funny shaped ears!

More of the lions.

And the tiger still prowling up and down.