If “liking” a kitten on Instagram doesn’t do enough for your inner Dr. Dolittle, pack industrial sized Purell and hit the road. While the general consensus is that humans poking and prodding wild animals should give us pause, there are rare opportunities worldwide to get up close and fawn over fauna. Here are some of the best places to walk on the beach with a cheetah, have the slowest meal ever with a giant tortoise, or get back to your genetic roots playing with chimpanzees.
Vava’u Islands, Tonga
When the boat captain says a South Pacific Humpback whale is “fluking up,” don’t throw a towel over your belongings; the endangered mammal is just displaying its tail. The waters off Tonga’s Vava’u Island group are one of the only places in the world where it’s legal to swim with pods of whales “summering” from their winter homes in Antarctica. They feed down at the pole, and then swim north to pair off and give birth. Although you may see 50-foot long mothers and their relatively tiny 20-foot calves touching, humans are not allowed to do the same. But you can snorkel nearby, using special methods that reduce splash.
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Outside Cape Town, South Africa
Most people seeking trusted companionship for long walks on the beach probably aren’t looking for a cheetah, unless, of course, they’re visiting the Cheetah Outreach education and conservation center outside Cape Town. Here, visitors can rent togetherness—including seaside strolls with the big cats—by the hour. Or skip the getting to know you time and get right to the petting. The hand-raised cat “ambassadors” here are not wild animals, so they are accustomed to cuddling and purr like house cats when stroked. And, despite being the fastest mammals on earth, they spend a lot of time lying around, just like your favorite (or least favorite) pets.
Michael Calvin
Private Park, Vakona Forest Lodge, Moramanga, Madagascar
Lemurs in Madagascar really do like to “move it, move it.” Imagine someone playing ring-toss on your neck with a sand-filled airplane pillow, one that skitters across your shoulders, tightrope walks down your forearm, then, in a burst, dismounts you like a Romanian gymnast exploding off the balance beam.
Several varieties of Madagascar’s dozens of lemur species live on an islet just a half hour from the entrance to Andasibe-Mantadia National Park, three hours from Antananarivo. A nature guide provides one of the playful primates’ favorite foods—yes, bananas—and before you can say Zoboomafoo, you’ll have new furry friends treating your body parts like a jungle gym.
The white and brown sifaka, skips, arms akimbo, like a kindergartener racing to recess. To feed, it steadies your palm with one of its hands, then, like an elderly aunt selecting petit fours at tea time, carefully plucks the food away.
Jason Straziuso/AP
Otago Peninsula, South Island, New Zealand
Most visitors flock to New Zealand’s South Island for its cinematic scenery, but if you’re ready for your penguin close-up, the Otago Peninsula, a rural spit of land across from the historic city, Dunedin, is the ticket. The catch is you can only glimpse the birds at dusk, so you’ll have to choose: the private Penguin Place reserve is home to the rarest species, the Yellow Eyed Penguins, who look like bandits or call center employees wearing tiny golden headsets; at the end of the winding road, in a less formal arrangement at the very tip of the peninsula, the smallest, most a-dor-able Little Blue (they are not actually blue) penguins scoot ashore each night below the cliffs at Taiaroa Head.
At dusk, tiny penguin faces pop out of the choppy water, the last of the setting sun’s pink sky reflected off of their shiny heads. They stand up and waddle up the sand, then take advantage of the man made wood and dirt steps to find their burrows—just gashes in the Cliffside—seeming not to notice small clutches of visitors standing slack jawed in front of them.
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La Digue, Seychelles.
Like the rail-thin super models who drape themselves across La Digue’s famously photogenic granite rocks, the island’s giant tortoises also like to eat tiny bites of greens. A short bike ride from the boat dock, en route to the famous Anse Source D’Argent beach, and through the quiet of the Union Estate, visitors can find a dozen or so Aldabra Giant Tortoises behind a low stone wall.
Granite rocks flank their enclosure; they are the smaller, smoother grey masses lurching in the mulch. The only sounds are island birds cooing, palms rustling, and the tortoises’ thick, large legs scraping the backs of their pen-mates shells.
Slow food movement supporters might appreciate their excruciatingly lengthy chew time once they tug a bite from your hand. With their parrot-like mouths, they gum the legume like grandpa without his dentures, then they inch away on their thick legs. Feel free to hit the beach first, these tortoises are going nowhere fast.
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Ngamba Island, Uganda.
On an island about an hour by speedboat across Lake Victoria from Entebbe (yes, that Entebbe), rescued chimps live at Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary. Their country-club neat surroundings include tented accommodations (for visitors, the chimps are in enclosures) and opportunities for close genetic relatives to frolic together. But some planning is required. Beyond the prerequisites for African travel, the Sanctuary requires doctor-signed, written proof of vaccinations against a laundry-list of viruses. Yet the pain of pokes and jabs melts at the first touch of a chimp holding your hand, or grasping onto you like a toddler, during the Integration program to acclimate orphaned chimps into bigger groups. Take an early morning walk in the forest along with staff, or just hang with a small group of chimps.
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Lone Pine Sanctuary, outside Brisbane, Australia.
Most koala “encounters” are more like orchestrated photo bombs on a static perched marsupial. But at Lone Pine, in the rural outskirts of Brisbane, Australia, visitors and animals embrace. Naturalists hang the koala from your shoulders, as though you’re a closet door, and it’s your weighted-down shoe organizer, your chin almost nestled in its head.
As “cute and cuddly” as they may appear, up close the “Awww” factor can quickly turn to “ick.”
Koala claws often feel as though they're drawing blood, and, if you’re paired with a boy, you’ll get a very memorable whiff from its scent gland, a gash on its neck. When you’re done, hop over to a large field stocked with docile kangaroos and wallabies (caution: although their scent doesn’t pack the same punch, as depicted in the cartoons, they can kick).
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Maldives
On several Maldivian atolls, it’s easy for landlubbers to participate in marine life encounters. After a briefing, hotel guests can stand shin deep in pale blue waters as stingrays that act more like puppies, glide right up and, instead of wagging their tails, flap their giant slick pectoral fins. The effect is akin to having a Lab as smooth as a slab of calamari humping and then vacuum suctioning your leg. And instead of scratching its belly, you’re sticking a fish in it (that’s where stingrays’ mouths are). Once they’ve had their fill (of fish, not your flesh), watch them glide off through the Maldives’ endless waters and marvel that you weren’t more petrified of their sizeable stingers. If the memory of Steve Irwin, who died from a sting in Australia’s waters, is stuck in your head, let it go. Despite that rare attack, stingrays are known to be docile, and more likely to skate away from trouble than to engage.
Mark Daffey/Getty
Cameron Highlands, Malaysia.
A winding drive up into the cool mountains three hours outside of Malaysia’s capital leads to a tourist attraction that is actually quite repulsive. City dwellers will need to beat back the urge to stomp on the insect residents of the innocently named Cameron Highlands Butterfly Farm, where it’s possible to touch, wear, and otherwise interact with insects that you’d Raid if you saw them back home.
Just past the jewel-toned butterflies in their death throes—poetically, they only live for one day—workers gleefully remove scorpions, leaf, and stick insects from their cages and put them on your arms or hands for a few seconds that may stay in your nightmares forever.
Thomas Marent/Corbis
Outside Kruger National Park, South Africa.
Even light packers can still lug a trunk through the South African scrub. Just a short drive from South Africa’s Kruger National Park, where you definitely should not touch the wildlife, take a very short bareback elephant ride or walk trunk-in-hand at the Elephant Sanctuary, Hazyview. The resident African elephants here were all rescued and are accustomed to people. Neat fetish? Sign up for an early morning Brush Down (for the elephants, not you), or feed the animals. They may even remember you when you return.
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