Shamba Safari — Attraction in Town of Mecan

What a fun place for the entire family. We went on a Wednesday once school started. We arrived right at open thinking it shouldn't be busy. There was at least a 20 minute wait . If you don't arrive early the line gets crazy long. When we left an hour later I'd say the wait was easily over an hour. Buying a bucket of food is worth it. Hide your carrots and feed them to the giraffes at the end. They will eat the pellets but will avoid people offering them pellets to come eat the carrots if you have them. If you have a shorter vehicle the animals tend to come over more. Every enclosure we went into the animals would come eat from us. The lifted pickup in front of us only the tallest animals could reach so they ended up dumping most of their food out the window. I was shocked most of the animals were health weight and not obese from all the food. I will say if you hate bugs you might want to not get food and leave your windows up. Black Flies, horse flies and loads of mosquitoes call this place home because of the animals and the water. They have quite a few employees riding around in utv. I wish they would do a better job enforcing their safety rules for the animals. I also don't think I'd go in the afternoon. Even going first thing in the morning lots of the animals were grazing well away from the road and uninterested in being fed. I can only imagine once it's hot and they've been fed a lot they just lounge in the shade. Would 100% go again. I will also add they do have port a potty available. I was fine but my wife checked a couple and decided to wait until we got back into town.

Edit my friends went at 2 in the afternoon and said the giraffes wanted no part of being fed so clearly early is...

I would not discourage anyone from experiencing this place. Just know that if your vehicle gets damaged, they are not liable. The first animals you encounter are camels. Two came over and one wanted to be fed. The second one leaned into my car and it bumped it(sounded like a kick) and I thought my side mirror was going to snap off. Then it kept bumping into my car. I was feeling pretty tense because I was unsure if it was upset. Then, I saw a woman worker drive over and she was very calm, so thank you whoever you are! :-) You made me feel less tense. She told the camel to stop rubbing against my car. After bumping it another time, I heard her say it was ok for me to drive on. I thanked her. It wasn't the camel's fault for the bump in my car because I am entering their territory. I'm just saying it felt tense while trying to remain calm. Again, thank you to the woman that helped me. Some of the animals were aggressive eaters, so I dropped some food for them and kept driving. I fed the calm eaters from the scoop given. It was incredible to see rhinos! Wow!! Also, both of the giraffes were just beautiful. I would go again, but definitely do not take a new car, or a car that you would not get upset about getting damaged. I am going to keep the bump in my car as it is a story...my car is now going to be called...

We were a caravan of 3 vehicles; 6 adults, 6 kids. Our only complaint was that we chose a very hot day for the long ride over (2 1/2 hours for one family), but we all agreed that, for the experience and the price, it was worth it!

Purposely chose a weekday and midday to avoid too many other vehicles and to full or napping animals...it was smart, we had plenty of face time (quite literally) with many of the animals.

Path is wide enough for a car to pull over to observe our spend more time in certain areas, or to pass others that choose to do so. Make the trip as long or as short as you like, go around once or several times. We went around twiceand spent extra time feeding and watching the giraffes at the end and we're there about 2 hours. Ìf you are careful about now much you feed each animal, 1 bucket is plenty for a couple kids (young or old) to share...but save your carrots for the giraffes as it's what they prefer. (Very smart ppl will stop by the giraffes after first lap and scoop up feed from wall for other animals in lieu of buying an additional bucket of food, lol) At $10 per person and $10 per food bucket and scoop, this experience is very reasonable for the family. We packed a picnic and went tho an area park afterward...out made for a full and affordable day of smiles...