There are some places that you visit that end up being one of your favorites not because they are the most beautiful or the people are the nicest or the weather is just fantastic. Sometimes, you have such a psychedelic experience (in the non-drug sense of the phrase) that you forever ingrain the experience in your head. It´s these places that you just laugh and shake your head when you think of the trip. Our first foray through Mendoza fit that bill.
We were heading from Salta, Argentina to Santiago, Chile to drop off Bonnie at the airport and then pick up our friend, Katherine. The trip was going to take a couple of days and Bonnie was interested in seeing Mendoza for at least a day, so we opted to do a fast overnight there.
Bill and I planned to pass back through Mendoza, so we let Bonnie set the agenda. With just a few hours of daylight, Bonnie opted to go to Park General San Martin. This park was built by the same landscape architect that built the Palermo parks that we had enjoyed in Buenos Aires. The park itself is humongous and includes a golf course, yacht club, zoo, etc.
Having started from our hotel a couple of miles away, we continued through the park. Admittedly, I had the map. There seemed to be little to no scale on said map, however, and we continued to walk until we saw the small man-made lake in the middle. We enjoyed some Gatorade on a bench and Bonnie and I decided that the zoo sounded like a good idea.
Well a mile turned into miles and Bill was NOT a happy camper too far into the walk. Bonnie and I were also tired, but certainly not ready to admit defeat. Bill was barely talking to us by the time we found the dang place. We bought our tickets and then walked in to the zoo where we were immediately greeted by a one-eyed parrot that was just walking along the sidewalk. OK, that´s sort of strange but we though that maybe they have a rehabilitation program for such birds. Right?
And then came the monkees. The monkees were not in cages. They were running around trees above us. Well, most of them were. Some of them were eating cotten candy from children´s hands on the ground.
The chimps weren´t quite as lucky as the monkees.
Then we notice that many of the cages have gaping holes in them. Some allow you to touch the animals (lions included) from the bottom if you so chose. One brave guest was sticking his hand in the puma cage and moving it when the puma darted for it. What a genius. Other cages just had gashes in the middle of the fence. Still other cages were just completely gone to the point that the animal was walking around the zoo on his own. I found my llama friend checking out the elephants and other animals on his own volition.
Further notice that the elephants are just a minute shy of freedom themselves.
I suppose the above picture looks fairly normal for a zoo if the people in the picture hadn´t walked by this fence and sign clearly indicating not to pass through:
This may sound comical or it may sound grossly inhumane. It was both. Clearly there was no one steering the ship at this place. In fact, the only thing we found maintained at this zoo was the flora. This made sense because during the entire 3 hours that we were there, we saw a few gardeners and no zookeepers.
Having a doctor in the family can be disconcerting at some inopportune times. Let me explain. Just as Bonnie was telling us about the infections on several of the baboons´ butts, I was peed on by one of them. Just a squirt, but right on my smacker. I learned that day that hand sanitizer burns when applied to your lip. We figured it would be TMI to post pictures, so you´ll just have to leave it to your own imagination.
By the end of the day, we were eager to get the heck out of dodge, but we were kind of in the middle of nowhere and didn´t know if we should go back the way we came or continue on in the same direction. After all, it looked like you could make a circle from our trusty map.
We started to walk and as daylight turned to dusk, Bill made a quick decision and jumped near a moving taxi to hail the guy. This proved to be the best decision that was made all day. After explaining where we wanted to go, the guy just started cracking up. ¨Why then,¨ he asked, ¨are you walking THAT way?¨
We tipped him well for saving us from ourselves.
-Chrissy
The hippo - One of the world´s most dangerous animals? Not at this zoo