Heading for safari

There are a few big attractions down on the island of Lolland and one which has been amongst the most popular particularly with the kids for generations is the park at Knuthenborg. The park is named after the castle which owns the land of the park. The former owner liked wildlife and decided to use a large part of his estate to form his own private big game park.

The park has become pretty popular so now it is actually a significant source of income for the castle. They have developed the park over the year so in addition to drive around and see the wildlife there is also a water amusement park at the area and you can spend the night in a safari tent from where you can wake up and look out at the wildlife almost the same way you could do on the savanna in Kenya.

The park consists of several different sections with the animals from the different continents around the world. Obviously a main attraction is the large African savanna which has the famous wildlife of Africa. You can go and see rhino alongside other African animals like giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and different antelope species.

The newest and biggest attraction at the park is four large elephants. The elephants used to work in a circus until the parliament outlawed the performance of elephants in the circus. The four elephant needed a new place to live and after a lot of debate of how to compensate the circus the government finally paid the circus and the elephant got a new life on the large elephant plain in the park.

Other sections of the park has north American wildlife like the bison and moose walking around a large enclosure where they can almost hide – fortunately we managed to spot a moose which was nice since the moose alluded us during our trips around northern Scandinavia during the summer and fall of 2020.

A couple of enclosures have particularly strong fences since they house some animals which are a bit more dangerous. There is a wolf enclosure where we can spot some of the arctic wildlife and another enclosure has tigers. The tiger enclosure is fairly small and we drive around it quickly but miss the tiger on the first try so we go another round and manage to spot a tiger which is trying to hide a bit.

Some of the animals you can touch this is particularly popular at the entrance where you drive pass a lot of donkeys where most people seems to stop and have a look when they arrive at the park. When you leave the park there is also the option to have last close encounter with other animals. Here is a group of lamas alongside some tiny ponies which walk around on a large grass field just before the exit.

A special section of the park is dedicated to robots instead of live animals. The robots are giant dinosaurs – apparently they could make a contract with Jurassic Park to buy a couple of live ones. Instead they have built the mechanical dinosaurs which can move a little bit and make some sounds which may or may not be representative of the sounds the true dinosaurs made. The animals in this section may not be alive but it was pretty well made so it was fun to see the mechanical dinosaurs.