While in South America, we visited many different places but one of my favorites was Peru. As we traveled all over the country using planes, trains, and busses, we were able to go to many historic sites including cathedrals, plazas, and ruins, including, of course, Machu Picchu. In all of this though, one of the things that stuck out to me the most was the roadside petting zoo.
I don’t know what the official name of it was but it stuck out because it was the most random thing out of the entire trip. It was toward the end of our travel week and we were all exhausted. We had been on a bus all day traveling up and down mountains and all across the country in order to see different areas of ruins and it was
starting to take its toll. I don’t know about the whole group but, to me, all the ruins were starting to look the same and the excitement was wearing off. I was exhausted and carsick and a little people sick. We were on our way to our last set of ruins and Wimon Walker, our guide/teacher/organizer, had just announced that we were going to skip the last ruin. It sounds bad but I was a little happy. My appreciation for the ruins was decreasing and my appreciation for quiet and alone time was increasing and I was ready to be back in the hotel for some much needed rest and recovery.
As we were driving down the road, some of us nodding off, our bus slowly came to a halt and Wimon stood up and asked if we wanted to see some animals. We kind of blearily looked at him like, “Seriously? Really? It is cold and misting outside, we have been up and down mountains and hills in thin air all day, and we have been traveling for a week with little time to sleep. Do you think we want to see the animals?” Unfortunately, our bleary blinking eyes said yes to him and so we all shuffled off the bus stumbling around on the side of the road. What we saw was not what we expected.
On the side of the road was a bunch of wire fences with a multitude of animals in them and a plain white building that I assume was an “office” 
of some sort but I’m not sure. In the middle of nowhere, on the side of the road in Peru, were a bunch of llamas, or alpacas, I can’t remember the difference, some wild cats, and some really big birds. As much as I didn’t want to get off the bus, I actually really enjoyed seeing all the animals. It was pretty relaxing and different than anything we had done that trip. It was a calming thing that gave us a little boost of energy to be able to make it the rest of the trip.
Ironically, the only thing that I loved more out of the whole semester was the zoo that my mom and I went to
when she came to visit and we went to Buenos Aires. I really liked being able to be closer to the animals and to see them in a different environment than the very cold and enclosed North American Zoos. While the whole semester was amazing, this one, 2-hour stop on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere is actually one of my favorite things.