Temaikén

Before I head 2000+ miles up north to Peru, I'm posting these pictures of a wild animal park / reserve / zoo / whatever thing so that there's something new to look at for the next two weeks. If this were a TV sit-com, it would be the mid-season episode when I stitch together a bunch of previous episodes and somehow try to tie them altogether via a very thin plot line.



Anyhoo, this animal park is about 45 minutes outside of Buenos Aires (using the direct bus, or 2 hours using the EXTREMELY indirect bus) and is called "Temaikén", which is an old indian name that means something. What, exactly, I don't remember but I'm sure it's quite profound. Or at least marketable to the local Argentines...


There are quite a few exotic looking flowers and flamingos right when you walk in the place. The interesting thing about flamingos, as I have learned whilst aimlessly wandering the greater part of southern South America, is that they live in a variety of places that are extremely dissimilar. This includes the super-freezing-cold-windy-Andes-mountains of Patagonia as well as the lush, warm, and delightful tropics of the Argentina/Brazil/Paraguay border.

Also, they have white tigers but they don't let him near the flamingo cage for obvious reasons. I think it's somehow become mandatory for every zoo in the civilized world to have at least one white tiger. At least this guy moved around a lot... usually tigers are pretty lazy as I've observed during my extensive, multi-continent, zoo-attending experiences.

Moving right along, let's get to the weird stuff. This guy is called a "Tapir". They look exactly like something you would see in the "Pleistocene epoch" section of your prehistoric animal history books. From my distant vantage point, they appeared to be somewhere between the size of a big pig and a hippopotamus. Also, this guy looked a little bored or annoyed while he was pacing around looking for something to eat.

Since I'm here in South America, right on the edge of the Andes mountains (well, a thousand miles away, but whatever) I would be remiss if I did not provide a picture of an Andean Condor. They're like the California Condors but not as big and with lesser publicity, I think. The wingspread measures somewhere around 10 to 12 feet wide though... we saw them all over the sky when I was down in Calafate, Torres del Paine, etc, last September. So... goooooooo Condors!

Next up, we have the "Ñandu", a distant cousin of the ostrich and rhea. They, too, are all over the place in Patagonia... running up and down the hills, mountains, and so forth. They don't seem to be the brightest amongst the bird family as our bus almost hit one, in the middle of a whole lot of nothing. You would think they could stay out of the road and stick to the nothingness all around.

These guys are called "Maras" and they're all over Patagonia as well. They're sort of a mix of a rabbit, kangaroo, and maybe a rat or something. They're about the size of a giant rabbit or a very small jackalope... if you're from New Mexico, you may have taken someone you don't like out to hunt jackalopes late at night. Anyway that concludes the tour of Temaikén.





In other news around here, my Spanish class was interviewed by a local Buenos Aires newspaper this week... naturally it will be published while I'm out of town. So I can't tell you if I made the cut, got edited out, or even what the story is about. But I bribed some of the students to get me a copy and hopefully something will be available online... assuming it's worth reading. And assuming you can read Spanish. When I return next time (end of November maybe?) I should hopefully have some good photos to post of Machu Picchu and the other Peruvian Inca ruins, plus Cusco, Lake Titikaka, La Paz Bolivia, and all points in between.