Alpha Core

Tom already went to Paradisio with some friends last year, when I couldn’t join. Since then Tom promised to visit the park together with me again, and that’s what we did a few days ago. After his last visit Tom posted quite enthusiastically about how amazing everything was and I really have to agree with it! We had a lovely day with lots of beautiful, friendly, funky and sometimes also a bit scary animals.

We saw a lot of birds and a wonderful bird show with sometimes for me quite frightening close-up eye contacts. Tom managed to take an even better picture of the eagle than last time, while I almost kissed the ground, because of my fear of birds. Well, I can still see the beauty of them, especially in cute pink birds, of which we met a whole bunch. Especially the busy little fellow (Platalea Ajaja) on the right looks so peaceful in my eyes.

They also had a huge variety of cool birds in other colours (like this black beaked stork to the left or parrots in every possible size and/or colour), so that as a bird enthusiast, Tom was pretty satisfied. As I already mentioned above I don’t always feel very comfortable with birds coming too close, but their flying accuracy impressed and inspired me.

Talking about flight accuracy I can’t let Paradisio’s bat cave go unmentioned. It is a bit tricky to find the entrance, but it is absolutely worth a visit. After allowing your eyes to accustom to the darkness for a few minutes, you can see different kinds flying or hanging around. In the bat cave you also find the entrance to the area of absolutely poisenous reptiles. You don’t have to pass through there if you are too sensitive, but they provide rescue kits in case you were poisoned (if everything runs concerning to plan those reptiles are held in closed cages).

Birds, bats and reptiles were of course not everything we’ve seen. We als made the acquaintance of reams of fish, the most exotic kinds in the aquarium of the park, others just swimming around in the park’s rivers and kanals. Some were pushing themselves a bit more into your view whereas others tried to lure you by almost disappearing.

Paradisio doesn’t show so many big animals and that’s probably the reason why the zoo seems to be rather animal friendly. Nevertheless they do have giraffes, which have a relatively big area for themselves, zebras and hippos to just name a few. The hippos however seem to have enough space to be completely overlooked. Elephants are scheduled to come this summer and the building site looks already promising.

Last but not least one of the main attractions in Paradisio are the monkey islands. Tom already wrote about the island on which ring-tailed lemurs live, and there is even another island on which squirrel monkeys (saimiri) can be pet, fed (only at the feeding times) and cuddled, if both parties agree. Even though I think the squirrel monkeys are slightly cuter than the ring-tailed lemurs I found the dried fruit with which the latter are fed a bit more appealing than the living maggots the squirrel monkeys eat.

Altogether we spent a superb day in Paradisio and I can recommend a visit there to everybody. Make sure you arrive early in the morning, because there is so much to do and to see that a complete day is hardly enough time. In the evening you will be very exhausted, but I promise you that seeing lots of different kinds of animals in this nicely designed surrounding is absolutely worth the effort.

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