Day 54: A kindergarten inside an animal park, and the storm at night

Maddi tracked the project down and got in touch: Wild Daisy is a kindergarten that sits inside a small animal park, the Parco Faunistico Fiocco di Neve near Civitavecchia. We are welcomed by Giulia, the founder and director, warmly and without any fuss — and the two other teachers are also called Giulia. The idea is that the children are outdoors all day and surrounded by animals the whole time, and that gives the place a character all of its own.

A biscuit for a raccoon

We can hardly believe that we really are allowed into the raccoon enclosure. Lavinia and Valentino are a little shy at first and in the end they give one of the animals a biscuit. Next door there are meerkats, kangaroos and owls.

The new site and the storm warning

Wild Daisy is in the middle of moving and we go and look at the new site with Giulia. It used to be the stables of a professional from the Palio di Siena, and the grounds are correspondingly large. Some of the animals have already moved, for instance my personal highlight, the kookaburra: an Australian kingfisher, counted in Australia as one of the country’s emblems, and Giulia shows us how to set off its laugh.

We had actually meant to spend the night there too, but then we are not allowed to, because there is another allerta meteo and they have concerns about the animals and about the insurance if anything should happen to us. On top of that there are the big guard dogs, which eye us critically and calmly mark every one of Enea’s tyres. We are almost alone on the wide grounds, the storm is coming in and we have to go without really knowing where. Even the way out becomes an adventure, because it climbs steeply and the surface is loose in places. We just about make it, at the price of a certain amount of rubber.

The night

Not far away we find a car park by a beach and position ourselves at a safe distance from trees and power poles. When we arrive there is nobody there, which is not especially reassuring, but it is late and we have no better alternative. Maddi lights a candle and a stick of incense in the camper, because today is the equinox and she always has these occasions in mind. Then the storm arrives. Lavinia and Valentino sleep like stones, Maddi and I only close an eye very late, once the storm settles. I look out of the window at all that water and count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder and the whole time I am occupied by the question of how safe a camper actually is in a thunderstorm — a car at least has its Faraday cage.

No water gets in and nothing else happens either. The next morning everything is wet and I discover that at some point in the night a VW bus with a pop-top roof has parked itself next to us …I imagine that to be considerably less comfortable 😉