Elephant Safari Park.

Upon checking out of Ubud and moving to Sanur we went to the Elephant Safari Park, which is on the outskirts of Ubud, about 30 mins from our hotel. A very expensive experience but well worth the money. This is a hotel/elephant rescue park and had I known about it before we came I would of booked us in to stay there. It was a very early 5.30am start but we got to clean and scrub the elephants with hoses and scrubbing brushes, then it was our turn to ride the elephants into the lake and take them for a swim, we had been prewarned to bring a change of clothes! This was then followed by a warm shower and a buffet breakfast. After that we had a 30 minute safari on the elephants around the grounds and finally they showed us some of the things they’d taught the elephants to do; painting, hula hooping and kicking footballs.
I did my research before booking this as there’s a lot of stuff out there warning you not to do these things because the elephants are mistreated however at the Elephant Safari Park in Taro, Ubud all the 31 elephants are rescued Sumatran elephants who are treated with such devotion by their trainers. The elephants range from 4 to 54 years old and 4 babies have been born there so far. It was definitely worth getting up early as we were one of the first families in the park and could spend quite a while on each activity, whereas when we came to leave around midday it was much busier and queues were starting to form.