Lujan Zoo (May 1, 2006)

This morning we got off to a slow start, as is the Argentinean tradition. I woke up early but lounged in bed while until other people woke up. I read the section in the guide book on the history of Argentina as well as the section on Buenos Aires . While waiting for Lincoln and Andrea to get ready, Roger, Adam, Pooch, Babsie and I walked to a nearby café on Avenida de Mayo and sat outside watching people go by as we ate a light breakfast. Because it was a holiday, the streets were unnaturally quiet and peaceful.

We returned to the apartment and prepared for our outing to the zoo. Lincoln has been raving about the Lujan Zoo ever since I met him, and Adam goes there frequently. We took the metro to Plaza Italia where we caught the bus to Lujan, a journey of an hour and a half. I slept almost the whole way there. The zoo was busier than when Adam usually goes, and because of this we didn’t get the full experience. Apparently when you are there with less people around, you actually get to help feed the baby animals and spend more time with them. This time we had to stand in line to wait to get into the cages to pet the animals. We pet young lions, pumas (a couple of them were only one month old – very cute!), and coatis. We went in the cage with the older tigers and pet them while they were sleeping. Then we went over to another cage with some older lionesses but they were very restless so they stopped letting people pet them. They did walk over another tiger to this cage (two men on either side of him with chains attached to his collar, just in case) and they let us in to pet this tiger. The lionesses were pacing back and forth at the other end of the cage, but they wouldn’t let us go over there and were being pretty cautious.

The animals are trained with dogs, and the dogs take over the dominant role in the pack to keep the big cats in line. It’s pretty amazing to think that these huge and powerful creatures are afraid of a small dog.

There was also a big bull sea lion being taken for a walk outside the cage and he was very funny because he kept stopping and posing for pictures. He had quite a following around him everywhere he went. I took a couple of pictures of him but it was hard to get around the crowd.

Adam and Andrea went for a camel ride, and there were elephant rides as well but we didn’t go on one. We’d both been on elephant rides before in Asia . It started to get dark and the zoo closed around 6:15 so we didn’t get a chance to get in the cages with the cheetahs or big male lions, which is too bad.

We went to the bus stop to catch a bus back into the city, which is notoriously bad so we weren’t hopeful. There was already a line of people at the bus stop (very orderly – they always line up!), and one bus came and only a few people got on it because it was already full. Another bus came but it was even fuller than the last time and only two people got on. Adam walked around asking for rides to Buenos Aires , but since there were five of us it was hard. Eventually Andrea called a remise (like a taxi, but they are unmarked, have set fares and you have to call them because they don’t drive around looking for fares). We waited ten minutes until he arrived and we were relieved, although we had to squish four people into the back seat. The driver had never driven to Buenos Aires before and he was excited. It’s a good thing we had Adam and Andrea with us to direct him, because we wouldn’t have been able to tell him where to go!

When we got back to the city we went out for dinner to Pizza Guertin, on Avenida Correintes. People eat so late here, and I’m slowly getting used to having dinner at 10 or 11pm. Adam said this pizza place is really good, but unfortunately there were only tables up on the third floor. We discovered that the pizza on this floor was not nearly as good as the pizza on the main floor, where you can order by the slice. Our waiter was terrible and took forever bringing us our drinks. Adam had to go ask for them twice and they still forgot my Fanta. When the food finally came (about an hour later), they mixed up Roger’s pizza order so he sent it back. The rest of us ate, and more than an hour later Roger still didn’t have his pizza. We were all ticked off at this point and just left, with poor Roger not eating any dinner. Don’t hold this against the pizza place though, because we returned the next day and ordered a slice from downstairs and it was very yummy, and fast. We just had a really bad waiter – and Adam made sure the manager knew! We ended up getting some stuff free, so that’s some consolation.

To see some pictures of our trip to the zoo, click here