We arrived at Awana Kanacha, a Llama Farm and Cultural Centre . It too proved to be a wonderfully stimulating place of interest because it's -a living museum where we not only learnt about the culture of Peru but we got to experience a taste of Andean life by feeding and touching llamas and alpacas and watching traditionally dressed women weaving and colouring their textiles and turning their cloth into beautifully crafted clothing.
This local project initiative was set up firstly, to keep alive the tradition of weaving as other pressures began to pull the people of Cusco away from their looms to the bright lights of bigger cities. But secondly, it was created to promote and provide a way for tourists to learn more about Andean culture in an engaging, enjoyable and practical way.
The farm project initiative brings together 14 rural communities and involves more than 420 families, which we think is pretty impressive. The co-operative members have made weaving as their primary economic activity because they want to bring a renewed appreciation and preservation of the home spun textile art industry which is unique to Peru and has been passed down from their ancestors.
The first thing we saw as we entered Awana Kanacha, were traditional stone and mud brick, thatched buildings and penned off areas filled with llamas and alpacas.
I don't know who was more excited, the alpacas or us. The mass jumble of llamas and alpacas sure welcomed us by bungling across to us all eager to eat the handful of grasses we held. To them, our presence indicated that they'd soon get to feast. Tourists are encouraged to handfeed the animals and get to "know" them and their quirky ways. We readily grabbed handfuls of grassy greenery from designated boxes provided for us and we held them out for "our" llamas and alpacas to chew on. We found the llamas and alpacas to be really tame, used to the attention from visitors and that they each had their own little personalities and made hilarious facial expressions from time to time.
