Llama Farm

My school in Cusco took a field trip to a llama farm. It's a cooperative that gathers people from all over Peru who know how to do the traditional weaving, which is in danger of becoming a lost art. They raise the llamas, alpacas and vicuñas for their wool and for meat. Vicuña wool is the finest, followed by alpaca with llamas at the bottom. Not only is the vicuña wool the softest and warmest, the vicuña can only be shorn every 2 years and are almost impossible to domesticate.

All the wool gathered at the collective is either left its natural color or is dyed using only vegetable dyes, which is the traditional way. People who are part of the collective come for 10 days at a time to dye and weave the wool and then return to their villages to sell what they have made, leaving some for the collective to sell in their store. It's very expensive but fortunately not my taste. A table runner was around $350 and a bedspread for over $1000 (picture-taking in the store was not allowed).

While there, we were able to get up close to the animals and feed them. In that respect they reminded me of the goats at a petting zoo - they knew we had food and they wanted it! Except this little tiny brown guy that I think was sick, we laid sprouts right in front of him, but he just ignored them, and us.

I also got to see two of them spit, but not at each other. One spit very close to me, I think I felt a little spray. Usually it's something they only do amongst themselves and is akin to a dog growling in animal parlance.

Many of the llamas reminded me of shaggy dogs, but my favorite one also had goofy, protruding lower teeth and a lumbering, graceful walk (video below). Oh, and there was one who looked like my classmate Alex. Of course it could just be the way the photograph is framed...

I found out that the look this llama in this video gave me is actually typical of them. Today, in a park in Arequipa, I think one was thinking about spitting at me just for looking at him, but he was tied up and I was too far away.