We had a good nights sleep - the room is very comfortable with a good shower. It was a novelty having a cooked breakfast before we packed and drove the twenty minutes back to Longleat Safari Park.
I had a morning appointment with the Giant Otters although I was not sure how this would play out as they are very aggressive and have big teeth! The keeper was called Chris and originally came from Valencia in Spain so nice to be able to talk about one of our favourite countries. The otters were amazing - very large, very quick and with very big teeth! I hadn’t expected to be able to feed them but Chris bought a bucket of raw freshwater and sea water fish and a very long pair of sturdy tweezers. With strict instructions not to go let me hands go anywhere near the little letterbox hole in the fencing, I fed the otters bits of fish. They are quite amazing and literally chatter with excitement as I got the fish ready.
Chris used to look after the penguins whichI had visited back in 2018 but apparently a number of them died from a strain of bird malaria specific to the UK which does not effect our own birds and so the decision was taken to no longer keep them.
Later in the day after the bucket of fish was emptied, we returned to see the koalas and we were able to get great views of the joey Hazel and a male who was very active outside. We also got so see Hamza - the BBC televisions photographer at work, filming around the park.
We were full from our cooked breakfast and so just had a coffee and cake for lunch before heading off in the car for a safari. W drove through the lion, tiger and wolf enclosures but to be honest, as it was quite warm they were not very active. Afterwards we drove through the large fields with giraffes, camera and various other animals.
It was a good day and the rain held off whilst at the safari park. The downside is that it poured down on the drive home and especially on the M3 - a challenging drive back.
