The Furious Llama

An insider’s look on my experience with a llama

I was in Cusco, Perú, and the bus left us at the top of the mountain so we could visit the incredible Sal de Maras ponds. We walked through the ponds of salt until there were no more ponds, at that point the hike begun. We were hiking down the impressive mountain to go eat lunch. The hike took one hour to complete. It was a long, windy and sunny way down. Then, we got to the bottom of the mountain where we had to keep walking until we reached the place where we were going to eat lunch. Finally, it was all of my 8th grade class, and it was time to eat at the bottom of the huge valley. The place where we ate was beautiful. The bright sun was shining above my head, and you could smell the wilderness and some of the horrible poop from the animals. You could see the fast flowing brown river and two gigantic mountains at both of our sides. The wind was sprinting like Usain Bolt.

Then, it was finally time to eat. I ate a delicious and very tasty chicken. During lunch, I noticed that behind me, in the distance, there were a llama and a vicuña. Llamas are very intelligent and can learn simple tasks. Vicuñas are relatives of the llamas. Did you know that Vicuñas produce small amounts of extremely fine wool that is really expensive? Did you know they can only be shorn every three years? Did you know the Incas valued the vicuñas very highly?. I had already seen both of those animals and I just ignored them for now. When I saw them I remembered that llamas are very social and normally they live in herds. Llama wool is very soft and lanolin free. When I finished eating, I went to a wooden bench that was somewhat close to the river. I just relaxed and talked with my friends. We began getting bored of talking too much, so one of my friends and I, went to see the llama that was in the corner of the field. We started playing with that curious, four legged creature. I was getting bored of looking at the llama, so I decided to give a fake kick to it. I knew that it was not going to hit it, but at the second that I did it, the llama turned around and kicked me. That was the fastest kick I had ever seen. It was a bullet, went as fast as a car. Then I remembered that llamas can spit and kick when alerted badly. Fortunately, that kick did not hit me, but then my friend and I burst into laughter and were very surprised. Then, my friend made a really big, weird noise. I had no idea why he did that, but right after the noise, the llama turned back around and looked at him. Then, the llama launched a ball of spit at my friend, but missed. He missed, but at the second that he missed my friend, we knew that it was time to leave the llama alone, so we went back bursting in laughter, to the group of friends by the river.