Birds, more birds and a lot more! (Paphos Bird and Animal Park (Paphos, Cyprus))

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Paphos Bird and Animal Park (Paphos, Cyprus)
Date:	29/02/08 (545 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a good place to visit

Disadvantages: none

My family and I have recently returned home from a week's holiday in Cyprus staying in the Paphos region. If you have read my review on Paphos itself you will know that I was not incredibly impressed with the area but we did have one lovely day visiting the Pafos Bird and Animal Park.

The park is actually situated about 15 km from Paphos in the Coral Bay area. In order to reach it you need to drive inland a little and slightly up the mountain. This means that when you are at the park you do get lovely views of the sea and the bays. It's actually quite beautiful.
Visiting in February meant that the park was hardly busy at all which meant we could stroll around at our leisure and I didn't have to worry too much about my daughters wondering off and losing sight of them. Also it's not a huge site and it's easy to wander around in a couple of hours taking your time to look at all of the creatures.

The first thing that struck me is that the park is very well laid out and also very clean and tidy. There is one main path which takes you all the way round with a number of offshoots, but you get a very clear map that means that you don't miss out on anything. Even on a relatively small site there is a large number of birds and animals to see.
There are more birds than animals. These are mostly caged and I couldn't wonder if some of these were a bit small but the birds do not seem to mind so much. There are lots of small birds such as parakeets, parrots, cockatiels, love birds, zebra finch to name just a few. By all the enclosures there were some fact sheets which were all in English and generally very helpful. I wasn't sure though whether some of the birds might have been moved because some of the fact sheets did not seem to be referring to the birds in the cages.

Larger birds included a large group of flamingos which are always fascinating to see. There were also ostriches, rheas and emus in larger paddocks. My daughters loved seeing these and we were able to get some good close up views.
There was also a bird show a couple of times a day. This takes place in a beautifully cool amphitheatre which must be bliss on a hot summer's day. Apparently it has air conditioning in Summer and heating in Winter. The show mainly consisted of a number of parrots trained to do various tricks like riding bikes and playing basketball! It was all very clever but there's a bit of me that always feels uncomfortable watching any creatures being made to perform tricks. My girls loved their antics though and thought they were very funny. At the end of the show some owls were brought in and it was wonderful to be able to see these at very close up.

There are also a number of animals at the park. I think that the main attraction has to be two giraffes. They have quite a large paddock to wander in and my girls were very struck by their very tall house! Other animals include zebra, camels, giant tortoises (who we never saw move at all!), eland, cows and sheep. There is also a small petting areas for children to get up close to lambs, baby goats and rabbits. This is not very large though and I can imagine on a busy summer's day this are would get packed There are very close facilities and reminders for the children to wash their hands as well.
One of our favourite areas was the reptile house where we saw a number of different snakes and reptiles which we could look at very closely through glass panels. When we went in we were the only ones so we had very good views and we were really able to take in these magnificent creatures at our leisure.

The park also has quite a large restaurant. They had quite a good range on the menu varying from some quite traditional cypriot fare to all of the usual options with chips! Everything was quite resonably priced and quite tasty as well.
Another area of the park which was a big hit with our daughters was the children's playground. This was very good with lots of climbing frames, slides, roundabouts and see saws. The girls had a lot of fun here and there were also some benches for us to sit on which was very welcome. There are also a couple of souvenir shops but as we did not go in I cannot comment on these. There were also ample number of toilets and these were well placed around the park which was very useful with a two year old who is not without the odd 'accident'. These were all very clean but obviously they weren't coping with large volumes of people at this time!

It is not too expensive to visit the park with entrance fees for adults at 15.50 euros and for children 8.50 euros. Also there are free transfers from all of the local hotels which is really useful. You have to book this in advance and are normally picked up in time to arrive at the park by about 10.30. You ae given about four hours to explore the park (which I think is about the optimum time) before being picked up to return to your hotel. In the winter season the park is open from nine until five but in the summer it is open until sunset.
It was an enjoyable half day spent looking at all the animals and I would recommend the trip. It's also good to note that the park is committed to the breeding and conservation of birds, animals and plantlife in Cyprus. I also noticed from the literature that we picked up that there will soon be lemurs, meercats, an aquarium and a sesl show so it is obviously an attraction that is still expanding.

If you visit the Bird Park in Cyprus I hope that you will enjoy it as much as we did nd also I hope that you will find this review useful.

Summary: A lovely Cyprus attraction!