Fail on basemap.drawcounties() Python 3.5.2

Platform:

Python 3.5.2 |Continuum Analytics, Inc.| (default, Jul  2 2016, 17:53:06) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-1)] on linux

Throws error on basemap.drawcounties() (over Illinois)

 Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "animate_aws.py", line 171, in <module>
    writer='imagemagick', fps=5)
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/animation.py", line 832, in save
    anim._init_draw()
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/animation.py", line 1221, in _init_draw
    self._draw_frame(next(self.new_frame_seq()))
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/matplotlib/animation.py", line 1243, in _draw_frame
    self._drawn_artists = self._func(framedata, *self._args)
  File "animate_aws.py", line 166, in animate
    display.basemap.drawcounties()
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mpl_toolkits/basemap/__init__.py", line 1980, in drawcounties
    default_encoding='latin-1',drawbounds=drawbounds)
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mpl_toolkits/basemap/__init__.py", line 2146, in readshapefile
    for shprec in shf.shapeRecords():
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mpl_toolkits/basemap/shapefile.py", line 543, in shapeRecords
    for rec in zip(self.shapes(), self.records())]
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mpl_toolkits/basemap/shapefile.py", line 515, in records
    r = self.__record()
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mpl_toolkits/basemap/shapefile.py", line 491, in __record
    value = u(value)
  File "/home/scollis/anaconda/envs/pyart35/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mpl_toolkits/basemap/shapefile.py", line 58, in u
    return v.decode('utf-8')
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xf1 in position 2: invalid continuation byte

Comienza con mpl_toolkits/basemap/shapefile.py, siguiendo records() y __record() del traceback reportado de drawcounties(). Reproduce la llamada drawcounties() de Illinois en el entorno Python 3.5.2 reportado y rastrea el fallo de codificación; se considera terminado cuando la llamada se completa sin el UnicodeDecodeError.