Leones, Tigres, y Osos- Dios Mio!

3/22

So if you haven't seen my facebook album, basically I just spent an entire day with Lions, Tigers, Bears, Elephants, you name it. And unlike American zoos where you can take pictures and poke at a glass screen, in Argentina- anything goes.

Kerrie and I decided to take the school day off and go to Zoo Lujan- a two hour bus ride outside the city in order to encounter an off-the-beaten path zoo where you can actually go into the cages and play with the animals.

In Argentina, something is always bound to go wrong, and luckily for us it only happened on the bus ride. We were under the impression that our bus' last stop would be the zoo, but sure enough we saw the zoo... as we were driving past it towards an unknown destination. Keep in mind we're an hour and forty-five minutes out of the city at this point with nothing but informal housing in our view.. needless to say we had kind of a "....what do we do" moment. 

We arrived at the town of Lujan, where a MASSIVE church was about the only thing it promised/we could see. We decided to hop in a cab for less than 10 bucks to take us back to the zoo, with possibly the intent of returning to visit the church (I'll google to find a pic to post.. it literally was a monstrosity).

Basically the background for the zoo is that it promises to foster "saving animals" and relationships between creatures and man. It's a load of BS since basically all they do is sedate them so heavily that people can enter cages 'safely.' In the 30 years or so that it's been opened, however, there hasn't been an attack, which made me comfortable to enter and pet the tigers and lions. Our favorite was how the trainers explained to us they were only sleeping/tired because they're nocturnal animals... and that what they feed them is "milk." Obviously I can't preach too heavily since I went and had an amazing once-in-a-lifetime experience, but seeing the giant male lions so dead/asleep kind of put things in perspective.

We started out with little youngsters (I think like 8 months) and moved on to babies, then grown adults- pictures  of course to come. Then took a quick camel ride, fed elephants, and had bears eat right out of our hands. It was literally out of some bizarro world; all we had to do was approach a cage of grown tigers/lions/you name it, ask "podemos entrar?" and we were set with a bottle of milk and the freedom to do everything but take the animals home with us. I love this country sometimes.

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Also just nonsense bloggy stuff-

Yesterday we saw Margin Call in a theater in Belgrano, which was kind of cool to see with subtitles and realize I both understood the English movie and the Castellano words at the bottom of the screen.

I also kind of have been realizing a total attitude shift from my weekend in Iguazu and the week after in Patagonia. All my anxieties from the first month seem to have disappeared, and upon coming back from the mountains I was filled with an odd comfort in the busy city streets and skyscrapers versus the impending doom I felt when we came back from Tigre in January.

While I miss so many things about the states, even beyond just friends and family, I've come to appreciate so much about living down here with such an adventuresome lifestyle. While I miss having my own space (the four person-turned six person apartment is really weighing heavily on me.. especially since the plus two are both women over the age of seventy), clean floors in my house, good laundry, efficiency most of the time, being able to smile and speak to strangers without worried about getting robbed, and other white girl problems, there are so many things about Buenos Aires that I will never be able to experience again.

For example, when else will my nights start after midnight and continue on until sunrise? When can I just sit at a cafe/restaurant/bar for hours without worrying about where I need to be/what I need to do or holding anyone up? I'll miss the friendship that comes out of the relationship with my choripan man or the heladeria boys. It's a weird sort of missing of the city- I don't think I could ever live here, and I can't wait to get home, but I really have fallen in love with Buenos Aires and what it has to offer. I'll even miss hearing Spanish/Castellano in the periphery of my day to day activities.

I can't wait to show my parents my city- they get here in a week and a half!!!!!!!!! and it will be cool to see for myself how i've gone from freaking out from culture shock to touring around my family all the spots I know and love.

Chau for now- will update after the weekend!

 me and kerrie and the 8 month old lion

 my hand and the lion paw- my favorite pic of the bunch

 GIVING BESOS TO A LION

 feeding an adolescent lion

 tiger candid

 go bears??

me and a baby puppy and BABY TIGER- they claim the puppies are there to teach them how to act like domestic animals and to allow them to learn to coexist.... hmmm.

Chau :)