Animal theme park offers unique experience

By: Anthony Bayarong - Manila Times

SUBIC BAY Freeport: The Freeport offers a new animal experience this summer. Zoobic Safari, which earlier brought a tiger safari to the free port, is now offering a bigger and much-improved animal show, plus an educational camp for venturesome kids and adults.

If you want to see poodles do the waltz, monkeys that dunk a basketball, pigs hurdling obstacles, or dogs dancing the tinikling, then Zoobic Safari is just the place for you, said company CEO Robert Yupangco.

The popular theme park opened several new attractions for the summer season, dubbed The Zummer Zoobic Safari program, with additional facilities and entertainment features.

You can do so many things here, Yupangco said. You could go camping. We have a boot camp, with a course. You can learn different things like how to breed animals.

Under the special summer program, Zoobic Safari has headlined its daily entertainment fare with an animal show, where Jenny, the monkey, impresses the audience with her acting skills; Vera, the dog, does a tricky question-and-answer segment; while poodles dance and demonstrate athletic skills and potbellied pigs jump and fool around.

During a tour of the whole theme park, tour guides share trivia about the golden pheasants, tarsiers, albino water buffalos, moon bear, camels, and other animals featured in the park.

The tour would take half a day, as it includes a visit to the Rodent World, which has specimens of cloud rat, one of the biggest rodents in the world; the Rodent Saloon, which is equipped with small bath tubs, hair blower and shampoo for its tiny furry customers; the Serpentarium, which has a collection of pythons and other reptiles; and the Tiger Safari, where visitors ride on metal-screened jeepneys to get close to tigers roaming in their natural grassland habitat.

Also part of the tour is a visit to the Savannah, where ostriches, wild bears and guinea fowls roam freely; the Animal Muzooeum, which boasts of a rare collection of stuffed wild animals and mounted animal skeletons; and the Croco Loco that features live crocodiles.

A highlight of the tour, and for a fitting afternoon finale is an animal parade with representative specimens in the park, both wild and domesticated animals, are brought out in a parade that is actually a modern take of the biblical story of Noahs ark.

Despite the overwhelming number of attractions at Zoobic Safari, Yupangco said the theme park is only about 30 percent completed.

We have yet so much to do, and I think 50 years wont be enough to accomplish all of it, Yupangco said with a laugh. We now have 50 tigers here, but we will soon introduce white tigers as well, more zebras and giraffes are also coming in, and yes, an elephant.

Yupangco also mentioned plans for animal races, which include greyhounds, horses, and quite surprisingly, even chicken. This is in addition to Zoobics ongoing breeding program for endangered animals, and a pit bull program, which trains what are otherwise known as fighting dogs for the non-aggressive activity of racing.

Management is currently working on more adventure rides, a forest camp with trailers painted in tiger stripes, as well as fishing and canoeing adventures.

The Aetas Way offers the unique experience of living close to nature, as the indigenous people of the Subic Bay Freeport still do.

This seemed ironic, as Yupangco himself admitted, but he added that the idea was for Zoobic Safari visitors to get a grasp of the Aeta lifestyle without sacrificing comforts.