Beekse Bergen [National Animal Day!]

Beekse Bergen
A safari-park where you can see, spot and study fantastic wildlife

In case you forgot to treat your pet today; here is a reminder because it's National Animal day! I thought it would be the perfect day to showcase a few of the rarest animal species that inhabit this planet.

It all started with paying a visit to Beekse Bergen, the weather was still good and what a lot of luck! There were baby tigers to be seen. So stick around, read or scroll your way through the post, because this post is all about animal wildlife.

For those who don't know Beekse Bergen, it is a safari-park located in the South of the Netherlands. The difference between an old fashioned zoo is that animals can roam "freely" around. Each species have their sector, where carnivores have their section and herbivores are often mixed. I've said it before, I have mixed feelings about keeping animals caged, seeing that most of them have more living space puts a smile on my face.

Pricing

In case you are planning to visit the Netherlands, and would like to pay a visit to the safari park (which is amazing, you'll see or yourself), I wrote down the expenses how much it cost.

Expenses
_{Ticket: €26.00

Parking: €9.50

Gas: €35.00}

Perfect weather

It was a true joy to be walking around. I can hardly remember the last time I visited a zoo or safari park (forget about that polar bear, that was a rainy day). But this day, this day was perfect. Good weather, friendly staff, and lots of animals to see. I was up for a good challenge: capturing these animals on film.

Enough space

The park did a great job of creating space for the animals. You'll only see cars driving through on specific roads and other than that; it's all animals. And there were lots of them. Majestic Lions, Amur Tigers, weird-looking birds, scary winged bastards, reptiles... the list goes on and on and on.

Even though one of the features the park has to offer is a safari; a drive-through through the park, it was perfect weather to be walking through it with your own two feet. On second thoughts, I believe it was much more beneficial to walk rather than driving through the park. I noticed this in some of the photographs I took; there was a huge line of cars waiting for each other in the burning sun. Sounds fun.

Lions; the kings and queens

Kicking off with the lioness. I took this shot while we were going through the safari with the car. However... the car had some issues and after 5 minutes in, we were already on our way back to the garage.

The staff gave us free tickets to make sure we would have a wonderful time and experience. And a few weeks later, we went back.

Monkeys

One of the first animals we saw were monkeys, there were several apes around the park. Baboons, Gorillas, and Chimps. I missed the little Skullcaps, I'm not sure if they lived there.

I took this photograph with my 500mm Rokinon, it is an old-school mirror-lens that I barely use. It's because of the quality of the lens. I almost forgot about it, but I was happy to have recovered it from the dust as I would never be able to capture the moon like this with it.

I felt that my 105 Sigma prime lens wasn't enough to capture these animals.

Special moment

In the photographs above, I had a special moment with a Silverback. We had a serious staring contest. We looked at each other deep in the eye, kissed, and exchanged digits. He giggled like a little girl while doing so.

Joke aside, these three photographs are almost scary how human-like they look. It makes me wonder, what's going on in their minds. Simply amazing.

Mixed grounds

Blue Wildebeests, Zebras, Cape Buffalos, Blesbuck and all sorts of other animals were living together on the same grounds, which I have never seen before. Most zoos or parks have their animals caged and labeled. This makes much more sense, as they would live together in the wild as well.

Great choice!

The Big Five

Managed to take this amazing close-up of an elephant, I'm pretty happy with this shot as it shows the gentle expression of the animal. Did you know that the African Elephant is the largest land animal on the planet? It's no.1 of African's Big Five's list. The African Rhino is on the same list, and you know... I busted it taking a shit and a pee right afterward.

That was funny to see, so I had to capture that beautiful intense and emotional moment.

_{ps; The Lioness at the top is also part of African's Big Five.}

Deadly predators

While we spent most of the time watching the Tigers play, there were many deadly predators to be seen. Lions, Tigers, the Crocodile of the Nile and Birds, you name it, and it was probably there. Overall, they were just amazing animals to watch.

Jaguar

The entire visit was a blessing, as I said before, the weather was perfect. And damn, there were so many animals to photograph. Amongst one of them is the jaguar and these photographs are my absolute favorite from the entire trip.

The jaguar might be my favorite animal. Its strength and strategy to take its prey high up the trees are very impressing to see. The Amur Tiger was just beautiful to see, but I feel that they became more "pets" than actual predators. Living the easy life eh? I wonder if they will make it in the wild.

Sidenote;

I realize that I could easily divide this post in several posts itself and reap rewards for all the photographs separately, some of you told me in the past that I should do single posts of my images, and I noticed people doing just so. But hey, not my style. I might do some shorter posts to save you all some time. If you do enjoy these longer posts; please let me know in the comments below.

Having that said, I appreciate all of you that are going through my (especially my long-ass) blog posts and read them. I see new and familiar faces who curate my posts, I hope all of you have a great weekend.

Cheers and happy National Animal day!
Ruben