Presidencia Roque Saëz Peña,
Argentina
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
What a great name for such a tiny town! Not much here but some thermal baths so we got hot and steamy in a Turkish bath for a hour or so - lovely. The campsites continue to go downhill - this one has bathrooms with no electricity, no drinkable water, no flush on the toilets and no showers and to cap it off they are always locked so you have to really plan ahead and find a wee guy to open them up every so often. Again, the site doubles as a public park so we packed up our tent each morning and bribed the park guards with cigarettes to look after our rucksacks during the day. Picked a different place to pitch the tent on the second day and boy was that a good decision, during the night the heavens opened and the park was soon awash - very beautiful to see in the moonlight but not so funny if we´d stayed in the previous spot as it remained under a few inches of water throughout the next day.
Pottered off to the zoo in the morning as it was meant to be the best in Argentina and with a focus on Argentinian animals rather than foreign exotics. What a load of ****. The Lonely Planet has earnt it´s nickname as the Lonely Liar again. More poor lions and tigers pacing up and down in tiny cement cages, makes you want to cry. And what´s worse is that the zoo park is HUGE - they have so much room to build bigger enclosures, not impressed.
