Zoo Lujan

Today I woke up only two hours after I’d gotten home from the previous night (Argentina hours are crazy!!) to go to the zoo. I figured out which bus to take to get to Plaza Italia (the 108) where I could meet my friends at the McDonalds there, because that’s the area where the bus to the zoo leaves from. We had heard that it costs 11 pesos in only coins to go to the zoo (it’s about 2 hours away from Buenos Aires), so we were a little worried about where we’d get so many coins from since everyone is hesitant to even give you even a dollar in change because there is a shortage in coins in this country. The banks will give you a max of 10 pesos, but since it was Sunday and all the banks were closed, we were going to have to figure out something else. I met Danielle at McDonalds and while we were waiting for Kylie, I decided to grab a media luna croissant (yes, even the McDonalds here sell pastries!). The only bills I had on me were 2 fifty peso bills, so I used one to pay for my 4 peso media luna. I handed the cashier the huge bill, and apologized, while she in turn opened up the register and apologized for not having any bills to give me…all she had were rolls and roll of coins!! Needless to say, I was ecstatic that our 11 peso in coins problem was more than solved…it was the weirdest thing! We decided to wait for Kylie for 30 minutes, but after about 25 minutes we decided that she must not be coming and went to find the bus. When we got to the bus stop, we ran into Kylie who explained that she couldn’t find the McDonalds and decided to just wait for us at the bus instead. She said she was jsut about to go look for the McDonalds again, and if we’d come 5 minutes later then she would have been gone! With two streaks of good luck in a row, we payed for bus 57 and discovered that they’d made a whole new bus that goes to Luhan that doesn’t require only coins anymore. So, with my 46 pesos in change and a ticket the Luhan, we boarded the bus and made the 2 hour bus ride there. Along the way, we passed more residential areas of Argentina, some of the country side, as well as the poorest neighborhoods I’ve ever seen in my life. We arrived in Lujan after only about an hour and a half, got off in the middle of no where, and walked about 5 minutes to the zoo.
The entrance fee was 50 pesos (about 13 dollars) which I payed for with most of my coins. Immediately to the left when we first walked in, we saw the first pin of baby lions. There was almost no line to go in, so we made our first stop. We were all in shock that you could just go in (with someone helping us of course) and pet these wild animals! We looked at the map and diecided to make stops at the older lions, camels, elephants, older tigers, and bear, and over the span of about 2 hours we were able to pet all of these except the bear. We pet the baby lions, full grown lions and tigers, I rode a camel, and fed/pet an elephant. The whole time we just kept looking around at the zoo, thinking about how weird this whole experience was. It wasn’t quite a zoo, but more of a petting zoo with dangerous animals. We didn’t really quite know what to think…this would never, ever happen in the US. My experience at this zoo was a paradox; it was one of the coolest things I’ve done, while it was one of the saddest things I’d seen. We had read that the Zoo Lujan was the “most controversial zoo in the world,” and after going there we could definitely see why. It was such a cool thing to do, but I wouldn’t go back.
After we rode about 2 hours back, Danielle and I grabbed some Kentucky Pizza and then I went home, ate a little more dinner with my family, and slept really well.