Glamping with manatees: What it's like to sleep over with the aquatic giants

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Glamping with manatees: What it's like to sleep over with the aquatic giants

CNA Lifestyle's May Seah shared a sleeping room, so to speak, with the placidly charming animals at the River Safari's Glamping with the Manatees feel, which is dorsum from Mar xiii to 20.

19 Feb 2022 06:48AM (Updated: 09 Jul 2022 10:22PM)

I can't say I'd e'er wanted to spend the dark with a manatee, just when I was invited to pack my purse and go glamping with them, it immediately became clear that this was the one thing that had been missing from my life.

Afterward all, who doesn't dearest these adorable sea cows? They look like giant bean numberless with solemn, puppy-dog faces. They're then mystical that ancient sailors legendarily mistook them for mermaids. And they're ane of the biggest stars at the River Safari, where their Amazon Flooded Forest exhibit is perennially popular.

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Sleeping in a tent within the exhibit, pitched right up next to the huge aquarium wall, turned out to be as magical an experience every bit it sounded.

We shared a sleeping accommodation, so to speak, with the placidly mannerly animals at the River Safari's Glamping with the Manatees experience, which is back from Mar 13 to twenty. And yeah, there's aircon.

Manatees wake early – most 6am – which meant I opened my tent flaps later a night of sleep to a transfixing scene of playful creatures diving, floating and rolling, enjoying their morn calisthenics.

They are fascinating animals, not only considering of their size, shape and movements, but as well because they accept beady, almost human-similar optics and whiskery snouts. It's the easiest thing in the globe to sit down in front of the massive glass panel and later find that you lot have spent hours getting lost in their underwater earth.

These precious few hours of early-morn tranquillity, when it's just yous and a herd of floating manatees in full privacy, brand for an experience not presently forgotten.

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GLAMPING: YES, At that place'S AIRCON

The best role of the River Safari's ii-day-1-dark Glamping with the Manatees program, if you ask me, is that you lot become to go "camping" without actually having to experience the honest-to-goodness wilderness.

Tents are set upwardly past the company Heavenly Glamping. (Photograph: Joyee Koo)

Is there air-conditioning? Yes! Are there proper mattresses in the tent? Yes, 2 queen-sized ones! How are the shower facilities? Yous have to walk a little bit to go to them, but yes, they are very clean and no, I did not spot any lizards or creepy-crawlies. And the security situation? There is a sentry on duty who stays awake all night, guarding the door.

Yup, I similar nature, but I similar it entry-level, cheers.

Manatees go to slumber at dark just like we practice, and they snooze about the surface of the water because they need to come up for air every 15 minutes or and so. So, yous can retire peacefully into your tent without fearing that you'll miss as well much activeness.

Make sure to wake early, though, so yous can sit in the doorway of the fairy-lit tent and watch the animals at their nearly active.

One curious fiddling guy even stopped to stare at me, staying very yet behind the glass exactly at eye level for a good few minutes. Information technology felt like a once-in-a-lifetime moment of connection with a fauna that volition always be regal and mysterious – and really, really cute at the aforementioned fourth dimension, like a majestic, mysterious finned potato.

The photograph-worthy tents will of course be the highlight of the trip, and in that location'll be no sense of impecuniousness there, to say the to the lowest degree.

But there's an activeness-packed programme that takes you through the River Safari also, which families with children in particular will appreciate.

MANATEES AND FRIENDS

In the visitor of friendly and knowledgeable guides, nosotros learned all sorts of things about manatees. For case, these speed crash-land-shaped mammals may be circular and rotund, but they actually have very little blubber.

What makes up their girth, and so? The herbivores' bodies firm long lengths of gut to aid them process tough fibres. They're non fat, they're just digesting, okay? Oh, yep, their intestines also incorporate pouches of gas that help them float – and they fart a lot in the morning.

The Amazon Flooded Forest now has 18 West Indian manatees, many of which were born here. If you see a massive one eclipsing all the others, that'll be Eva. At nearly 30 years old and weighing in at nearly 1,200kg, she's a female parent of eight and grandmother of vii.

And at the moment, there are 3 manatee babies, all built-in last August. If you lot're lucky, yous might see them suckling at their mothers' teats, located under their flippers.

Nosotros got to prepare a snack of sweetness potato leaves for them, as well as make fish food balls to toss to the massive arapaima fish that share the aquarium.

An agouti nibbles on a nut (Photo: Joyee Koo)

It's not all nigh the manatees, though. The glamping experience also packs in an animal show, for which seats were reserved so we could skip the queue; and an exclusive session with a keeper in the squirrel monkeys' and saki monkeys' enclosure.

I was extremely chuffed when I got to pet a pelican.

The "mystery beast come across-and-greet" segment kept us in suspense but didn't disappoint: When the giant white-plumed, web-footed bird sauntered in through the door, everyone lost it.

Luke is smiling. We think. (Photo: Joyee Koo)

This special guest star was Luke, i of the zoo's ii pelicans. He's a bit of a diva who likes to hog the limelight, pose for wefies, show off his impressive wingspan and brandish his ball-communicable skills. But that'south to be expected when you're so handsome.

I hateful, he did angle his beak towards me and open it in a style that gave the impression that he was trying to eat my head. But I gave him the do good of the dubiety.

I don't think there are very many people in the globe who can say they've played catch with a pelican – or spent the night sleeping with manatees, for that matter.

River Safari'southward Glamping with the Manatees, which was first offered terminal December, will be returning from Mar 13 to xx. A tent that sleeps upwards to four people is Due south$999 for the upper deck and Due south$1,299 for the lower deck. Bookings commence on Feb 19 at 9am at wrs.com.sg.

Berry Encted

Glamping with manatees: What it's like to sleep over with the aquatic giants

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