Safaripark Beekse Bergen – The Netherlands

During our Herbstferien (fall break) back in October, we traveled by train and spent two weeks in the Netherlands.

Outside the town of Tilburg lies a safari park that we visited on our last full day of our vacation.

We find that as the boys (8 & 10) get older, activities that used draw their attention now bore them. So we‘ve moved on from children‘s museums and kiddie parks to full fledged amusement parks and now a Safari Park (they love animals).

So we drove the 15 minutes from our rental house and arrived just as the park was opening (something we are doing more and more these days) to beat the crowds.

Our first stop was the unique driving portion of the park where we saw many of the big African safari animals (giraffe, lions, zebras, wildebeest, rhinos). We also saw lesser known animals (such as sloth bears and Siberian tigers) that are a part of its active participation in worldwide conservation programs. Luckily, nothing happened to our rental car as the animals were docile, busy eating their breakfast and weren’t in the least bit interested in us.

We next took the relaxing boat safari (going early in the day to again beat the crowds), where we saw more animals such as active lemurs and playful monkeys.

After a late morning brunch and trip to the gift store, we moved onto the walking portion of the park.

Instead of taking a lot of photos, we enjoyed the exciting adventure, the animals and each other.

However, we did have to capture Ben visiting his favorite animal, the red panda!

And I took this quick shot to send to my books club as the endangered Okapi was a central character in the book we were reading at the time, What You Can See from Here by Mariana Leky.

We unexpectedly spent the most time with this beauty as the boys fed it fresh leaves and grass.

Scrambling over an animal habitat. Watch out!

And there were silly times.

And funny faces.

We ended the tiring day enjoying an early dinner at the park that we had pre-booked. It consisted of freshly barbecued meat and fish as well as a buffet.

Ben was at first hesitant to eat the meat after spending time with the animals, but quickly reversed direction when he saw the ribs.

All-in-all, we had a magical day at Beekse Bergen.