A Llama in Chile

I took this photo in Santiago, Chile, partly because I couldn’t resist the look on the animal’s face, but mainly because of the quaint and colourful adornments. The llama can be found all over South America—Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador—and especially in Peru.

The locals keep llamas as pack animals and sometimes, as in this case, street vendors use them to attract customers. Llamas are also used as a source of wool, hides, food, tallow for candles and dried dung for fuel. The wool is highly regarded and can be used to barter for goods.

However, commercially the wool of the alpaca is of a higher quality than the llama’s wool, but both are trumped by the vicuna, which is found higher up in the Andes and which has the finest and most expensive wool.