# The most memorable wildlife encounters

> The most memorable wildlife encounters while traveling: Nara, Daintree, Cairns, Magnetic Island. Fine art wildlife photography prints for your wall.

- Source: https://clevertourists.com/guides/collection-wildlife-encounters
- Authors: Evan & Clara, Clever Tourists (first-hand, from a 526-day trip across 20 countries)
- Published: 2025-03-22

Some of the most vivid travel memories come from a chance encounter with a wild animal — not staged, not behind glass, just a moment shared with something that lives there.

## Places

### Nara, Japan

Nara Park is home to more than a thousand wild sika deer, considered messengers of the gods in Shinto tradition and free to roam the grounds of the city's ancient temples.

### Alice Springs, Australia

Emus roam freely around Alice Springs and the wider Red Centre, one of the few places where Australia's largest native bird can still be seen foraging across the open outback.

### Gusinje, Montenegro

A swallowtail butterfly rests with wings spread on a sun-warmed limestone wall near Gusinje, in the mountains of northern Montenegro.

### Milford Sound, New Zealand

A colony of black coral rises from the wreckage of a sunken ship at Milford Sound, its dark stems and feathery white polyps swaying in the current as reef fish drift past.

### Ao Nang, Thailand

The forested limestone karsts around Ao Nang are home to wild long-tailed macaques, often spotted foraging in the trees and undergrowth just back from the beach.

### Khao Sok, Thailand

An Atlas moth hangs from a leaf in the rainforest around Khao Sok, its enormous wingtips patterned to mimic the heads of snakes.

### Magnetic Island, Australia

A short ferry ride from Townsville, Magnetic Island's granite boulders and eucalypt woodland shelter a wild population of rock wallabies that have grown comfortable around the island's few visitors.

### Daintree Rainforest, Australia

The Daintree is the oldest continuously surviving rainforest on Earth, roughly 180 million years old, and its undergrowth is dense with skinks, tree frogs and other small reptiles rarely seen in daylight.

### Prague, Czech Republic

A nutria — a large, semi-aquatic rodent — pulls a scrap of bread from the water beside a group of ducks on one of Prague's riverside canals.

### Cairns, Australia

Far North Queensland's tropical climate supports some of Australia's most striking insect life, from the iridescent Ulysses butterfly to vivid emerald moths found nowhere else.

### Apollo Bay, Australia

An Australian magpie forages in the grass just off the Great Ocean Road at Apollo Bay, one of the continent's most recognizable and vocal native birds.

### Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

A Vietnamese blue-crested lizard, its head washed in orange and its body a vivid blue, clings to a tree trunk in Ho Chi Minh City, scales catching the light between the concrete and traffic noise of Vietnam's largest city.