Jordan and I got up Friday morning and were pleased to see that the temperature had made it down to a high of about 89F. Heat that I would have complained about a few months ago now seemed like a welcome cool down!
We decided to take advantage of this nicer weather and take a trip to the Al Ain Zoo. After eating a quick breakfast, we drove to the zoo and arrived just after it opened.
Near the zoo entrance
Even the walk from the car to the zoo was absolutely gorgeous. The zoo is located at the foothills of Jebel Hafeet, so the views were of the jagged mountains. All over there were big palm trees, bushes covered in flowers, and tall saguaro cacti. A trip to the zoo in Al Ain is more than just seeing animals, it is almost like visiting a garden.
The zoo had bright orange, pink, and red flowers
When we walked through the gate, we were astounded by the emptiness of the plaza. Friday mornings in Al Ain are notoriously quiet, as most families are at mosque. It also helped that we got an early start and that it isn’t quite winter yet. The peacefulness of our zoo visit was really nice. We saw maybe a dozen other visitors the entire 3 and a half hours we were there.
We wandered the paths of the zoo, seeing gazelles, wild dogs (closest thing to a dog we’ve seen in a while), and Arabian antelope. We saw the giraffe exhibit where you can pay extra to feed them (we didn’t do so this time around, but it looked fun!).
Eventually we came across an indoor exhibit. Jordan had been to the Al Ain Zoo the last time he lived out here, but this building was new to him. We walked in and were excited to see a very nice hippo exhibit! We had a view of their outdoor area, and were low enough to see them lumber through the water. We spent a while here watching the hippos cool off in their pools.
After the hippos we tracked down the big cats section, where we saw lions and tigers galore. Before this trip I had no idea that white lions were a variety of lions (like white tigers, their coloring is a recessive gene and people breed them to get the effect). Many of the tigers were donate by sheiks and sheikas to the zoo, and my guess is that they were former pets.
Near these exhibits were the birds. The zoo had a raised walkway that you could climb stairs up to, giving you a better view of the birds. As we walked along, a large stork flew up and landed on the railing.
After over 3 hours of enjoying the zoo, we decided it was time to head home, not because we weren’t having fun or had seen all there was to see, but because at this point our feet were killing us from all the walking on the cobblestone sidewalks. We look forward to coming back some time and seeing the rest!
