Malibu Wine Safari

Malibu Wine Safari; exactly how it sounds… it’s in Malibu, you’re on a safari AND YOU’RE DRINKING WINE!! What could be better?! Nothing; the answer is nothing.

For my BFF Jill’s 23rd birthday, they offered us a free day with lots and lots of wine (seriously, LOTS of wine). We’d seen a bunch of pictures and posts from other people on the internet just raving about how amazing it was, so we were super excited! Mostly excited to see Stanley the giraffe, but also very excited for the free drinks!

We met at Jill’s  house and we all drove up together. WHAT A DRIVE! Seriously, the views were unbelievable. It was one of those drives where I couldn’t stop looking out the window wondering how this ended up being my life. The mountains, the perfectly blue sky, and all of us singing as loud as we could from the back seat. Honestly though, a picture couldn’t do it justice.

Once we got to the ranch, they took us to our open air safari vehicle! It had a ladder for us to climb on, and of course it was covered in a zebra print. Naturally. There were only six of us, so just the back 2 rows were full!

They took us directly to Stanley the giraffe, as I’m assuming he’s one of their biggest attractions (not just in size lol.. haha that was me trying to be funny and failing).

I was fully aware that giraffes are huge animals, but once you’re up close to one…WOW are they big! They took us onto some platform so we could get up close and personal with Stanley and there was a big bowl of lettuce sitting on a table! I had no idea we’d be FEEDING him, but there I was, putting some fresh lettuce on a super blue, super long giraffe tongue. Guys, that tongue was weird!!!! I even got comfortable enough to try feeding him “lady and the tramp” style!

We spent a ton of time with our favorite giraffe, and then our guides reminded us of the wine waiting for us at the next stop, so immediately we said our goodbyes to Stanley and were on our way!

They took us across this floppy bridge (the boys had fun jumping on it haha) and we ended up on this cute patio with some lawn chairs! They poured all our glasses full of wine and then told us they’d keep refilling it if we wanted more, which I didn’t think was common for just a tasting, but nobody was turning down the extra wine!

We had finished around 2 glasses of wine each before heading to the next spot! Then back in our safari truck, they gave us another 2 glasses of wine! They took us to feed more animals, and we were kind of buzzed at that point so we were all SO excited!

Apparently donkeys and alpacas are very into carrots, because they were getting REAL close trying to get every last bit we had! It was less gross than I had imagined actually, I figured they’d be slobbery and licking our hands but it really wasn’t bad!

Then we checked out more of the animals, had more wine, saw more animals, had more wine… you get it. Our last stop was at this really cool kind of outdoor museum of old props and cars! They poured our glasses with some type of red wine, and even though I’m not the biggest fan of any reds I still drank it haha! We began to explore this “museum” type thing with a glass in hand, and discovered so many cool things! We all posed in front of the van from “Little Miss Sunshine” even though at the time we had no idea it was from that movie! We all thought it was similar to the vans they had in LOST!!

Needless to say, we were all pretty tipsyyyy by this point.

It was a hot day and the wine was really getting to our heads, so it was a good thing that the tour was coming to an end… so we thought?! Nope, this was not the end.

Since they had offered us this trip, after the tour they planned a whole picnic for us at a different part of the ranch! It was beautiful! Round hightop tables, swings, and a full bar of course! We brought our own food and they supplied the wine (again!). I didn’t get a great picture of the picnic, but it was a good time for sureeee!

Again, we were pretty tipsy so nobody was about to drive 45 minutes back to Los Angeles! We needed something to do in the meantime while we waited to sober up! So we went a few minutes down the street and found some really cool nature path that apparently led to a waterfall! We hiked for around an hour and the entireeee time I kept thinking I was in Hawaii! It was so green and tropical and everyone was loving it!

Unfortunately though, I was in heels because I didn’t think we’d be doing a hike after our tour… so it made the hike slightly more difficult (when I say slightly, I mean VERY). After we hit the hour mark with no sign of a waterfall in sight, we had to turn around because my boyfriend had to pick up his friend at the airport. I was also pretty ready to head home and we were all feeling much better at this point, only left with some wine headaches.

We started our drive back and everyone except the boys in the front, fell asleep. We were OUT. Wine will definitely do that to ya hahah! We woke up to Taylor, my boyfriend, taking really embarrassing pictures of us and laughing a little too loud! It was around 30 minutes later and we were finally out of the hills, and the sunset, man… it was perfect. One of the brightest and most stunning sunsets I’ve ever seen!

t was a great little day trip that I know we’ll all remember for a really long time!