Recently, Marco and I had the opportunity to visit the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. The park is located about 45 minutes from Daytona Beach and was founded in 1893. One of it’s earlier attractions was a burning spring that was lit on fire, which sounds really cool! Today, the park functions as a modern zoo and provides both educational and fun activities and wildlife exhibits for the whole family.
Did you know there are over 24 species of croctilians? I didn’t, but the St. Augustine Alligator Farm has them all. Alligators are easily one of my favorite animals and I love to see them in the wild here in Florida but nothing beats getting to observe them up close and personal.
The highlight of our visit was the brand new sloth and yellow-foot tortoise exhibit and encounter. This cute sloth couple, named Teddy and Grizzly, are over 40 years old and have been recently acquired from Busch Gardens. Have you ever hand-fed a two-toed sloth? Have you pet one? My guess is that you haven’t yet and I would highly recommend it! Marco and I got to step into the exhibit to experience these friendly sloths and their tortoise friends. When I fed one of them, they gently grabbed the back of my hand and pulled the food into their mouth! We do a lot around Florida and the sloth encounter has really stuck with Marco these last few weeks. He is still wondering if they are actually bears (I think the names confused him!) and what else they can eat. French fries? lettuce? I do also want to mention that the staff were friendly, knowledgeable and more than happy and to answer all our sloth and tortoise related questions during the encounter.
In addition to more crocs than we could count and hungry sloth friends, the park is home to several species of birds, tortoise and other reptiles. Marco really enjoyed the dinosaur exhibits and fossil hunting for treasures. Along with animal exhibits, the park hosts daily wildlife and animal feeding shows, several hands-on animal encounters and a zip line course above the gator infested waters. How cool would it be to zip line over gators? Would you do it? I personally would and I would bring the go pro!
I suggest you check out The St. Augustine Alligator Farm for all they have to offer plus their educational and fun seasonal events and parent’s night out.
Here are a few more photo highlights of our visit.
*These tickets were provided to us for the purpose of this review and media content. All opinions are my own. Thank you for having us out!