From Juliaca, Rolf Heimann, our agent Matthias Hess, and I drive to another alpaca farm at “just” 13,800 feet (4200m) elevation. What I learned about altitude: You don’t want to move around very fast. Everything is in slow motion and you move as unhurried as possible. You don’t notice the altitude right away, but run 50 yards too fast and you’re gasping uncontrollably.

The alpaca farm lies at the bottom of a valley, and that makes a big difference. The valley is more fertile, and the alpacas enjoy better grazing and produce better hair. The problem here is this: the ownership of the land is not clearly defined. Everyone wants the land in the valley. But once you buy some, another farmer comes along a week later, claiming that the whole deal is null and void, and that the land belongs to him instead. So nobody invests here. The previous farm we visited avoided this difficulty by breeding their alpacas in the mountains. The land there isn’t as fertile, so no one wants it.

Today’s farm, however, has their own solution to the problem. The farm hands here teach knitting techniques to the people of the neighboring villages. They often even donate the fibers. In one workshop, for instance, local women knitted sweaters for their school kids. And from patterns even, which is something new for most of the people here. The techniques they learn allows the villagers to accurately knit to order, opening up new job opportunities for them. Exciting! Such projects make the farm popular, and thus well accepted in the area. And what is accepted tends to stay.

Next morning we have a tasty breakfast. Eggs fried personally by Rolf Heimann, with bread, ham, cheese, and honeydew melon. Delicious! One last time we journey up into the mountains, where alpaca farmers show us a shearing. The alpaca gets a kind of jacket put on directly afterwards. It looks kind of funny, but keeps it warm. The farm hands sort the fibers immediately according to quality. Each alpaca is registered, and notations are made regarding fiber length and weight. Really unbelievable what sort of scientific research the farm is accomplishing. The alpaca, by the way, bleated miserably during the shearing – considerably louder and more intense than the animal before it. And what’s the difference? Right! The loud one is male…!

After the drive back to Juliaca, we fly to Arequipa, a mere 8,200 feet above sea level. We’ll visit some production workshops here – more of that in my next blog entry!

Tags: Alpaca, Peru

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 6:00 am and is filed under Collection, Environment, Material, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.