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Countries > Peru > The city of eternal spring Arequipa and wonderful valley Colca (page 4) >
The city of eternal spring Arequipa and wonderful valley Colca (page 4)

Irina Nazarova, Peru (January 2008)
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The road from Arequipa to the canyon and naturally backs passes through the national reserve Pampa Cañahuas that is the inhabitation of camels. And it is not by chance Arequipa is the biggest in the world supplier of alpaca and vicuña wool not only within Peru but in the whole world. We have never seen such quantity of these charming animals.

Vicuñas Vicuñas
The most elegant and valuable representative of that family is, of course, vicuña. It is the smallest of the hampless Andean camels. The weight of vicuña is only 36 kg (maximum 55 kg for male camel) and height – about 1 m. But it gives the thinnest in the world (12 microns) fibre. Just for comparison cashmere is 14-15 microns thick. The thinner wool in the world only belongs to a Tibetan antelope chiru (possibly the future symbol of Olympiad in Beijing. But its sale is totally prohibited, so vicuña has no rivals.

The things made of vicuña are exceptionally light and possess thermal insulation properties. A scarf made of vicuña would cost above 200 USD. And in European market the price for 1 m of fabric comes up to 3000 USD. One kilogram of fibre costs 500 USD. Vicuña resides, mainly on the territory of Peru on the plateau not below 3200 m (and up to 5200). Earlier, the clothes made of that wool could be only worn by the representatives of Incas nobles (and nowadays, this is an inaccessible in price luxury). One grown up specie gives approximately 250 grams of fibre once in two years (its relative alpaca gives 1250 gr.).

Despite the centuries-old efforts of the South American residents, vicuña has never yielded to domestication. Even the zoo dwellers remain untamed for several generations. Attempts to put vicuñas into sheep pens led to bucks killing one another. According to the legend of the Andean residents, this animal has a mistress - Pachamama (mother-earth), and a shepherd – Coquena – mythical defender of animals, especially of vicuñas, who rewards decent hunters with gold and silver and punishes foolish exterminators of wildlife. But, unfortunately, he failed to protect defenceless mountain dwellers from mass slaughter in our times. At the times of Inca empire there were about 2 million vicuñas, and by 1960 on the territory of Peru there remained not more than 5000 heads. But luckily in 1965 the program of protection of valuable animals started to act in Peru. And presently killing of vicuña in Peru is punished more seriously than murder of a man.


And now vicuñas live in freedom. To collect wool they use the pre-Spaniard period method – chaccu. At dawn the peasants, gathered from all the region, surround the groups of animals and with cries drive approximately 300 heads to one corral. This takes place from September till November, when it is not that cold. They remove wool only from the back and sides and not more than 4 times within the whole life of an animal.

Unlike other camels vicuña has to drink water every day, that is why it resides near some water reservoirs. Another very interesting fact – vicuña never licks its newborn clean, that is thought to be connected with a special structure of its lips. And because of this, as our guide used to tell us, vicuña is the sole animal that is able to delay delivery, if it starts at night. Because if a baby animal is born at night in the mountains where temperature quite often goes below 0, it will not survive. And in the morning it is already warmer and the sun quickly dries the skin of a newborn. In complicated mountainous conditions it will not be able to stay helpless, that is why, 45 minutes after its birth it gallops rather fast for some short distances.

Alpaca Baby-alpaca
Alpaca is the most numerous representative of humpless American camels. About 3.5 million heads of this species (75% of the world quantity) only live in Peru. It is characterised not only by thin wool (12-28 microns) but a variety of shades: black, white, grey and brown. At present 22 shades of the wool is counted. However, Incas knew how to breed the animals with hundreds shades of wool, but during conquista these skills were lost. Alpaca weighs 50-60 kg, and annually gives 3-6 kg of wool. This animal is also a source of tasty and useful meat, the dishes from which can be found in menus of any more or less decent Peruvian restaurant. Some researches think that alpaca is a domesticated vicuña.

Llamas Llamas and aplacas
Llama is the largest animal, up to 116 cm in height and 155 kg in weight. Usually it is very peaceful, but if it is annoyed, in order to protect itself it can spit the digested content of its stomach. This substance contains acid, so if you came across such a situation, protect the eyes, otherwise you will face problems. Llama wool is more coarse (20-80 microns), but the animal can be used as a pack animal, but with one limitation. Llama will never carry a load of more than 50-60 kg. You just exceed the load – and the obstinate animal will simply lie on the ground and will not budge.

Llama is a mystical symbol of the Andean culture, and still it is used in various rituals, even sacrifices, as, for example, during annual festival in honour of Sun - Inti Raymi in Sacsayhuaman (near to Cuasco). It is llama that was represented on the first variant of coat of arms of Peru (October 12, 1920), but in the second variant (February 25, 1925) it was replaced by vicuña. Llamas have always accompanied military marches of Incas, both as pack, ritual animals as well as a source of food.

Guanaco – are the wildest animals of this family and possess the wool that is as thin as a vicuña's (15 microns). They weigh 90-120 kg. The most hardy, they live, where other mammals don't survive. Of course, we failed to see guanaco, but other animals showed off quite a lot for us.

Hotel in the Colca valley
In the wonderful valley even the hotel, where we stayed, was unusual. Cosy houses were built in a traditional style of stone and wood with thatched roofs. And the secret is that houses somehow accumulate heat during the sunny day and do not get cold during the night, when the temperature goes below 0.

Magic of intricate process of weathering Magic of intricate process of weathering
And we also managed to see quite a lot of interesting things in Colca valley: extraordinary rock pyramids – example of intricate process of weathering, mysterious burial grounds on vertical slopes, ancient terraces, etc. But in order to describe all this, we would have to publish a complete guide-book, and that is just another story.

Mysterious burial grounds on vertical slopes
P.S. Just not long ago I came across the information in the Internet, that a Polish researcher Andrew Pietowski measured the depth of Colca canyon in the area of Huambo and found out that it still exceeds the depth of Cotahuasi and comes to 4160 m. Can we believe it? Or is it that important?




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