Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

Sunday 29th January was a fantastic day. We headed off early from Knysna to the nearby 'Monkeyland', a sanctuary to around 400 monkeys which due to interaction or exploitation by man cannot be easily released into the wild.

Our knowledgeable guide spoke softly but with passion about his charges, and with obvious distaste for the uncaring pet owners, circuses and street entertainers who were responsible for plight of these animals. Besides giving us the opportunity to see some relatively rare species (ring-tailed lemur, anyone?) in a natural habitat, we were also able to cross a rope suspension bridge high in the tree canopy that was literally festooned with monkeys!

Next door to Monkeyland was a huge aviary called Eden. This is home to a huge range of species - all of which appeared to be hiding from us at first (with the exception of a particularly mischievious white Macaw which planted itself on Sharon's back as soon as she arrived and had to be extracted with some force!)
The aviary turned out to be enormous and we saw (and in some cases were attacked by) an extraordinary number of different and largely beautiful birds.

Finally for Sunday we took a trip to an elephant sanctuary. This really was an unforgettable experience (I know, I'm going to do that phrase to death!). But here, we got to walk the elephants by holding their trunks, and were able to feed them and basically get closer to them than you would think possible.

We'll showyou the photo of the inside of an elephant's mouth later! To know that these animals were not being exploited and were being cared for properly in a secure environmnent made the trip all the more special.