A few weeks ago I headed out to the African Lion Safari, located in Southwestern Ontario, Canada.  It is a beautiful animal park filled with wonderful and exotic animals from all parts of the globe, in particular Africa. 

You can decide if you would like to go on the tour bus to explore the safari trail or take your chances driving your own car.  It's not the lions nor the cheetahs nor is it the rhinoceros roaming around that you have to worry about - it's the baboons.  The hungry baboons to be exact.  It wasn't long until I began to understand why people were placing pieces of fruit onto the windshields of their cars.  They were trying to entice the baboons to come over and sit on their rear view mirrors and munch on the food.  What a photo opportunity!  If you can image the view of what you would see close up, you can appreciate how funny the photos would turn out.

To my relief, I did not have such a close encounter/photo opportunity with the baboons and could breathe a sigh of relief with not having to worry about purchasing touch-up paint or that long black piece of material that was just pulled somewhere off of my car  - I will leave that for the gentleman whose vehicle I saw being slowly pulled apart.

Now choosing to head out to the park on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon was probably not the best idea as the traffic was worse in the park then it was on the highway.  And again, it was all because of the baboons.  They held up traffic as they enjoyed jumping from one car to the next, stepping out in front of traffic without a worry, and pleasing the visitors with terrific photo shots.

After we passed the baboon section, we then began to enjoy a less congested journey through the park and watched the giraffes walk with such style, the ferocious lions lazily lying around, catching glimpses of the cheetahs and pointing out some North American animals including deer.

After the safari trail we went inside the park to enjoy the birds of prey and parrot shows.  One parrot could even sing the Canadian national anthem.  Impressive.

It's a great place for young kids to run around and explore.  There were lots of families enjoying picnics under the trees and splashing around in the mini water park.

Not bad for just a couple hours drive.