December 8, 1998: a date that will live in infamy. For on the day, at a small town on the coast of Argentina, my wife was the victim of a sneak attack by – a sea lion?
The town was Puerto Madryn, so named by its Welsh settlers a century ago. Located about 700 miles south of Buenos Aires, it is a small city of about 20,000 souls who scratch out a living on the edge of Patagonia. American visitors to Argentina are often surprised to find so many of the place names to be decidedly un-Latin. Madryn is one such name, and nearby Rawson and Trelew are others. The Welsh left their mark on Argentina’s history, as did the Scots, the Irish, and the Germans.
The main attraction of Puerto Madryn to cruise ships like ours, the Royal Princess, was not its Welsh heritage but its deep harbor and its fine long pier, saving ship and passengers the inconvenience of tendering. There are few sights to be seen in Puerto Madryn, and many tourists opt for a three-hour bus ride over bumpy dirt roads to a penguin preserve. We were not tempted by this – there would be penguins enough later in the cruise – so we decided to take the ship’s shuttle downtown, less than a mile away. The Royal had docked early that morning and would sail at 5 PM. Looking across the bay at the town, we thought that an hour’s visit would be about right, so we dawdled over breakfast and made our way down the gangplank at about 11.
The 45,000-ton Royal Princess was a grand sight as we walked alongside her at the pier. This was our third cruise on the ship, but it was still impressive, inside and out. We had boarded her in Buenos Aires after a few days in that magnificent city, called at Montevideo for a day, enjoyed an “at sea” day, and were now en route to Cape Horn and up the other side of the continent to Valparaiso, Chile. The prospect of “rounding the Horn” was exciting. On the Royal’s first, eastbound cruise of the season, the weather at the Cape was ferocious; in the words of one crewmember, it was “like being inside a washing machine.”
On the pier, just ahead of us, abeam of the Royal’s prow, a small group of passengers clustered around a huge lump of an animal, a sea lion. A very tame sea lion, we figured, to be sitting so placidly on the dock, not at all bothered by the human traffic. The situation seemed to cry out for a photograph, and indeed the other passengers were clicking away while the sea lion posed majestically.
The best photo, I reasoned, would feature, from foreground to background, the sea lion, my wife, and the ship. So, advancing forward of the bow, I prompted Jill to “Stand behind the sea lion.” Bad advice.
Jill likes animals, and she assumes that animals like her, so she advances to within a few feet of the rear of the sea lion. Then she rashly reaches out to pat the head of this 700-pound mass of brown blubber.
POW!! Sea lions look as if they are slow-moving creatures. They are not. It took this one less than a second to flick its head around and sink six big teeth into Jill’s right thigh. The pivot was counterclockwise, so the force knocked her away from the edge of the pier. A clockwise thrust would have sent her into the waters of Golfo Nuevo.
Gasps from the onlookers as Jill reeled, bleeding badly through her torn slacks. Husband rushes fearlessly to her aid and hails a crewmember to help her up the gangway and to the ship’s hospital. The sea lion, having delivered its message, resumes its pose for the shutterbugs.
In the hospital, a female doctor and a nurse assess the damage. Big holes in the thigh, but no apparent damage to bones or muscles. Has Jill had tetanus shots lately? Who knew? People should keep records of such things, but most people don’t. The medics assume no tetanus shots and proceed. The next question is more interesting: Can sea lions carry rabies? The doctor is “pretty sure” that the answer is no. The wounds are bandaged. Jill will survive.
The ship departs an hour late because of high winds, and then we head southeast, toward the Falkland Islands.
The next day and throughout the cruise, Jill is a celebrity, as passengers point her out to one another as “the woman who was attacked by the sea lion.” One passenger we befriend is a stunning blond girl, Mary, from New Orleans. Mary, it turns out, is a doctor, and she is aghast that we have settled for “pretty sure” in the matter of sea lions and rabies. “Rabies is one hundred percent fatal in humans,” she says, “and the doctor should be absolutely positive about this.”
Mary’s logic is impeccable, so, later that day, I raise the point with the ship’s doctor, who seems less than amused that her judgment has been questioned. She tells me that on cruises to Africa she has treated crocodile bites and hippopotamus bites. From a shelf she takes a big book with lists of animals that can and cannot carry rabies. Every animal in the world is listed – except sea lions. She will inquire.
The ship is carrying two ampoules of rabies serum – not enough for the full series, but more could presumably be requisitioned from the large British army hospital in the Falklands. But before another day has passed, she calls to report that she has phoned the Center for Infectious Diseases and a Marine Biology Laboratory in the U.S. Sea lions do not carry rabies.
It made sense. Rabies is carried by carnivores, and sea lions eat fish, plus an occasional nibble at a human who sneaks up on it from behind.
The Royal’s hospital staff provided first-class medical treatment throughout the voyage, the medications were on target, and the wounds proceeded to heal nicely. (“But you’ll never wear a bikini again, dearie,” clucked one lady at lunch. There’s one in every crowd.)
Fate had a hand in the episode. The Royal Princess was new to this itinerary, and this was its second cruise of the season. But on the first, eastbound cruise, bad weather at the Falklands forced it to bypass Puerto Madryn. So ours was this ship’s first call at the port – and its first encounter with the sea lion on the dock.
We never did see the sights of Puerto Madryn. Fellow passengers tell us we didn’t miss much, but all the same I wish we had seen it. They say that some of the restaurants serve high tea there and that Welsh is spoken by some of the inhabitants.
We have seen the wild life, however, and we will never forget it.
