After another hearty breakfast, Brooke, Connie and I met Diego at the house to prepare Stumpy for our trip to town. Stumpy is a huge dappled Percheron horse with the biggest feet I can remember seeing on a horse. All of the horses are turned out to pasture for the winter so they need some work to remind them of their roles with humans. Stumpy is a work horse. We rigged him up to pull the buggy with four of us inside and it was a challenge. Stumpy has eaten well over the winter and the harness was difficult to cinch. But the humans prevailed and soon we were on our way out of El Saltamontes and onto THE road toward El Gato. On our journey Stumpy veered into every gate he saw hoping it would get him back to the barn, but Diego was persistent and it wasn’t long before Stumpy was trotting comfortably down the road toward the small house that Pamela and Sylvia call their workshop. They collect both sheep’s and alpaca’s raw wool after the shearing, wash it, comb it, spin it (on what looks like an elongated top), and wash it again. Only then are they ready to either crochet or weave the prepared yarn into beautiful scarves, blankets, bionas (hats that are similar to French berets and worn by the gauchos), and other items. Pamela demonstrated the spinning technique while Diego translated. We each purchased a souvenir before we were joined by John, Clay and Allan for lunch.
Alpaca wool is only the second finest in Chile. Four alpaca-like animals live in Chile, (in order of the wool quality) vicuña, alpaca, llama, and guanaco. Only the guanaco lives in this region. Vicuña live in the north and are smaller than alpaca; alpaca and llama live in various locales in the Andes. All are gentle and relatively easy to domesticate. Interestingly, Jose told us that a very large percentage of alpaca owners in the US are women. Jose has about 100 alpacas that he shears every two years. They are winsome animals and we enjoyed seeing them.
A restful afternoon followed our trip to/from El Gato (the closest small village) and we gathered for cocktails to share fish and Stumpy stories with everyone.
Latest Travels 