Monarto Wild Life Park

On Sunday we went to see the Monarto Wild Life Park which is about 80km from the city. We left early hoping to spend the whole day there. The drive there was pretty much uneventful through rough terrain. The Australian landscape a little further from a populated city is practically a desert. It's not difficult to believe that it's the driest inhabited continent in the world.

The Monarto park is spread over a large area of land, most of which is still under development, even the road leading to the park is still unpaved. And the temperature was 39 Celsius which was torture.

However, all that was worth the service and what the park had to offer. We were booked on to the first safari bus at 10:30. The $20 price of the ticket ($16 for me as I’m a student) includes everything other than food.

The bus ride lasted more than an hour, where we got to see motionless Giraffes, lazy lions, and cheetahs, Bysons, zebras, antelopes, rhinos, camels, ostriches etc etc.

There were separate sessions where the keepers of the animals talked about the animals. We missed the meerkat keeper’s talk, but we went to see the giraffe and rhino keeper’s talks. The keepers were very enthusiastic about their job. They simply adored their animals and seemed to consider that they’ve got the best job in the world, which was really nice. The rhino was huge (more than 2 tons) and the keeper who was a small lady loved to talk about him, calling him “good boy” and rubbing his big belly.

We spent the whole day there and decided to pay a visit to Murray bridge which was just a couple of kms down the same way. After just one wrong turn, we got there. The bridge was long over the Murray river, but nothing particular to visit.

Overall, it was a really nice experience, specially if you are interested in wild animals and safaris.