At Busch Gardens, a couple dozen visitors are led into the back of an open-air, flat-bed truck and told to hang on tightly. This group is taking part in the Serengeti Safari, on which they'll get up close to hippos, zebras, antelope and giraffes.

Bob, the Safari guide, explains that the Serengeti Plain features animals from all of Africa and that one normally wouldn't see all of these species in just one part of the Dark Continent. Most of the birds that fly about as the Safari begins are from Africa, too, Bob notes, "but some are just fly-ins from Florida who've come here to visit."

The Safari guests' first close encounter with mammals is with a pair of hippopotamuses, which actually are separated from the human tour by a series of poles -- spaced just far enough apart that the hippos couldn't squeeze through them with their multi-ton frames.

Busch Gardens' Serengeti is home to four hippos in all, but the males are separated from each other because "they will fight to their death," Bob explains. Among the quartet is Eva. She has been at Busch longer than the others, since the 1960s.

One of the hippos the Safari group is watching proves to be a rude eater, continually sporting a wide-open mouth that exposes yellow teeth and mashed carrots and pellets. This obviously is a trap between which a guest wouldn't want to get caught. But Bob is reassuring. "These are just herbivores," he says, referring to the hippos and the other animals that the tour will see this day. "A tour like this is too dangerous for meat eaters."

Next, the tour rides by a herd of zebras, which often run off as the Safari truck approaches but stand by in curiosity today. The stripes on the zebra, Bob tells his guests, are like human fingerprints -- no pattern is the same.

The closest encounter will be with the giraffes. It's obvious that the approaching truck is an instant clue to the giraffes that they're about to be fed some tasty vegetation by Bob and the latest guests. They walk right up to the truck, their long tongues twirling around the guests' heads and directly into the long blades of grass they're fed.

It seems as if these giraffes and their guests could intermingle all day, but Bob and his crew run out of grass and the giraffes walk away, having lost their main point of interest. The Safari heads toward the end of its ride, and an interesting trail it has been.

The Serengeti Safari is but a part of the Edge of Africa, where guests, separated by glass, can also get up close to such meat eaters as lions and alligators.

Elsewhere at Busch, this year marked the debut of the Gwazi, one of the largest double wooden roller coasters in the United States. It's there that the Gwazi Lion and the Gwazi Tiger reach speeds of 50 mph over hills, turns and flybys. They join four other Busch coasters -- the Montu, the Kumba, the Scorpion and the Python.

Other Busch attractions include: The 30-acre Adventure Island, highlighting "Splash Attack," where a 1,000-gallon, wooden bucket empties every seven minutes on unsuspecting guests below; Bird Gardens, which features not only fine-feathered friends but koalas and kangaroos, too; and "World Rythm on Ice," a tribute to seven different counties.

Busch Gardens is open year-round with varying operating hours and days. Visitors can check a schedule at

www.buschgardens.com or call the park at 1-800-372-1797. Single-day ticket prices are $43.70 plus tax for adults and $34.70 plus tax for children ages 3-9 For package and group rates, see the Web site or call the numbers listed here.