We had heard about the baby panda born at Pairi Daiza and for a few months we waited for it to grow a little bit bigger (the newborns are simply tiny). Finally, at the end of August we organized a Photoresk meetup to visit the park. We chose Wednesday as weekends are known to be crowded, and instead of usual two and half hour wait, we only queued for 30 minutes. And there it was, a little ball of fur sleeping on the floor in a cave. Accompanied by other sleeping pandas, you could see the fluffy thing breathing soundly. So not too great for photos, but it would have been nice to hug one anyhow.
The rest of the park, however, was rather impressive with all the buildings and nicely kept nature. No zoo would offer wild animals the space they truly need, but the “cages” were clearly bigger than in most parks. Pairi Daiza is also collaborating with WWF to help the preservation of endangered species, and we got great pictures of the unique creatures which would be hard to spot in the wild.
In the end we stayed until the closing hours and still didn’t manage to see quite everything. Of course we enjoyed our lunch, coffee and ice cream at the park, but the place was truly big and very picturesque.