Dubai Zoo

27th January 2016

In all of the developed world, what can you get for 75 cents? I challenge you to find a day’s worth of entertainment that will engage both mother and child for the equivalent of what we paid for the entry into the Dubai Zoo: AED 2.

I kid you not! 75 cents is the equivalent of what my friend and I each paid, to spend a sunny day with our toddlers among exotic animals that originally found themselves in Dubai through attempts Of illegal importation by shady characters. That is, all the animals here at the Dubai Zoo were once quarantined at the airport.

And so here at the zoo nested among million dirham villas in beachside Jumeirah, are tigers, lions, gibbons, elephants, ostriches, giraffes and crocs. The zoo itself is tiny, being housed in one of original sprawling villas in which a local Emirati family would have resided back in the day. Conditions are cramped, but volunteers and paid staff adore their furry charges.

Below are our two toddler friends after their day wandering through the zoo grounds, exhausted, thirsty and as you can see from Kingsley’s boots, messy from muddy play…
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