The camelids of Awana Kancha

Watching Peru’s emblematic animal is once in a lifetime experience.

I have lived my entire life in Lima, I am used to humidity. The climate in Cusco is dry and it can get to rain a lot unlike in Lima. The elevation above sea level is between 0 to 1.500 meters, on the other hand Cusco has an average altitude of 3,399 meters above the sea. It is clear that for these reasons both departments have different climates.

It was Monday morning when I got to Cusco. I felt my eyes closing as I walked to the immense blue bus. We were going straight to a farm where alpacas and llamas are raised the name of the place was Awana Kancha. We stopped there while we are on the highway. Since I have heard the stories of how people had gotten spat from a llama I am always very cautious with these animals. I have already seen llamas, their teeth are as big as ping pong balls, their ears are as big as a rabbits and they can eat all the food you offer to them.

When we got there the ladies in charge of the place offered us forbs for us to feed the camelids. I got surprised there were a variety of camelids, guanacos, llamas, vicunas and alpacas. I could feel that the animals were anxious to eat. I was afraid to get close to the alpaca, I thought he would get the food and my hand with it. Carefully I outstretched my hand and they stretched their long hairy necks to get the food. As soon as their mouths touched the food they would aggressively pull the food away from me and eat it fast as if it was a race. They’re jaws moved from one side to another, you could hear their teeth making screeching noises.

As we were more time there I felt more comfortable with the animals and I got near them without getting scared they would bite me. I fed different types of camelids till I got to a little llama that looked really hungry, the others wouldn’t spare food for him so I fed him with forbs. He was desperate to eat so he munched all forbs at the same time. As he twisted off the forbs from my hand I could feel his enormous yellowish teeth scraping my finger. He had almost gnawed my finger away. After doing research I found out that when llamas are small they are still really strong. Little llamas can load one halve of their own weight and that is about 50 kg.

Alpacas eat plants like grass and forbs, when this animals get more movement they tend to eat more. They had eaten a lot I noticed that the food in the container was scarce and there was a huge pile of food on the side of the guanacos. I started picking up food with some friends and they might have stuffed forbs in my pants because my pockets were filled with forbs and dirt. I felt something on my leg, it was hairy and wet. I could feel how a rough extensive tongue scraped my leg. As soon as I looked at my leg I saw a gigantic decrepit alpaca eating forbs on my leg. I got scared and rapidly got away from the llama and joined my classmates that were headed to the bus.