Visit to St Augustine Wildlife Reserve

Following a nice breakfast at the Hotel we headed back to St Augustine for the second time in two days. So why did we stop in Jacksonville and its because the Hotels are about 50% cheaper and we could get a Homewood Suites with the possibility of in suite cooking which suites us.
It took about forty minutes to get with a mile or so of the reserve and as it was very cold , about 4 degrees Centigrade, we found a sports bar and enjoyed a port chop and fries for Noel and pork chops and a rice dish for Jennifer, the pork chops were really juice, tender and tasty.

The St Augustine Wildlife reserve was set up many years ago to save the lives of animal which would otherwise be killed. Rich Americans and other purchase these mostly big cats and then find they are to big and dangerous to keep and look to move them somewhere else and so they have accumulated about 30 big cats, together with wolves and many other types of animals. So anything that somebody doesn't want they come here including two big cats from The Michael Jackson estate and there was also a black leopard which had been used in a Las Vegas show. We spent about two hours looking around the site and the tour guide really gave a good account about each animal. One amusing thing is that they give the big cats a bubble bath every two weeks, as it makes them smell nice and keeps the flies away and they really enjoy it. There was also a bear that had been so badly physically treated it was scare of everything and been fed the wrong food and was twice e the weight it should have been, but since they have had it it lost weight and beginning to recognise the care and friendliness of the staff and no so shy.

For reasons that I understand they do not allow cameras or mobile phones in the animal area as the sounds of mobile phones ringing or perhaps camera flash guns going off would disturb the animals but we purchased a small USB drive with lots of photos.
We left the site around 16.15 and headed back to the Hotel and slightly later joined the Hotel organised ‘Social’ is what they call it and u get free beer and wine and there is some free food, limited choice, but enough for many American to have up to three burgers together with mac’n’cheese and some salad, and some people went m=back more than twice. On our part we had a couple of glasses of wine and talked to the bar tender and then back to the room for a chicken salad.
We watched TV for a while and caught up with the end of the find we gave up on the other night.