Eudora Wildlife Safari
About an hour drive from downtown Columbia, SC in Aiken is a wildlife park that has been create to promote awareness about wildlife conservation while at the same time providing an experience that will delight any animal lover.
We bought our tickets online and showed up at the gate midday the next day. At the gate we collected our buckets of food (some sort of large pellet food and cut carrots) and took off into the safari park. We had four people in our car, one stationed at each window and I was at the wheel. The speed limit while you are in the park is 5 miles per hour and often you are moving along even slower than that. We weren’t in the park for more than 3 minutes when our first animal (an emu) showed up for a snack, after that it was a pretty constant 90 minute car buffet line of every animal that inhabits the park.
Here is our take away from our Eudora experience.
This is an interactive experience, these animals are used to cars and are not shy when they are hungry. Some are very particular about which snack they want so be sure that you have options.
We found it easier to feed them if we lifted our hands up so we could drop the food in their mouths opposed to having them try to take it out of our hands.
The above note being mentioned, your car will get slobbered on, your side windows will get folded or bumped by antlers and horns as these animals try to get close enough to get food. The animals are quite gentle but the horns are a bit of an obstacle.
Some of the animals will eat your entire food supply if you let them, we just tossed a few pieces of food outside the car and slowly left when they went for the food on the ground.
Some of the animals are shy and won’t get close but if you toss them food they will eat it off the ground
This is a wildlife park, the animals have flys on them and there are wildlife smells, none of which would have changed my mind about going but it is worth noting.
Beware of the long necked animals, particularly the camels and the ostriches, these guys have no problem reaching all the way into the car and simply taking your whole food container with them. (We were very judgy about all the people who were littering their food buckets on the ground of the car path until a camel and ostrich thieved from us from opposite sides of the car at the same time.
The Emus and Ostriches will peck for their food, its a little unnerving and your fingers might get pinched but it’s not painful.
The Giraffes are not in the safari, you have to walk to them in a separate area as their diets are more strictly controlled
Be prepared to laugh, shout, squeel, and generally have a good time.
