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Why Twitter from Peru?
During my month-long hiatus from this blog, I got hooked on another form of social media: Twitter. Unlike Facebook, which facilitates staying touch with family and friends, Twitter is a freeform broadcast to just about anyone on the planet. That might not sound like a medium that would interest a relatively private person (like me), but it turns out that Twitter makes it ridiculously easy to connect with people you’ve always wanted to know. You can tweet with editors of magazines and publishing houses, ask a quick question of New Yorker writer Susan Orlean, compliment Dave Matthews on his latest album and keep up with environmental issues from the Guardian Online, The Climate Project and other…
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Photo of the Day: Alpacas Grazing in Upis, Peru
An alpaca lifts his head while grazing on ichu grass, near Mount Ausangate; photo c. Barbara Drake 2008 Anthropologist Inge Bolin comments on the deep bond between traditional people in the high Andes and their animals: “People talk about their llamas and alpacas with great emotion. ‘They are our brothers and sisters,’ the people of Chillihuani often comment. ‘We owe our lives to these animals and they owe theirs to us.’ High-altitude herders have also called llams and alpacas ‘our ancestors.’ In the Andes, humans and their alpacas are part of the same empirical and spiritual world. They are believed to arise from the same source and to be governed…
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Woman Spinning Wool, Ausangate
photo by Barbara Drake Time for an Andean reality check. Too much Paris Hilton bikini nonsense. I met this woman last month while trekking around Mount Ausangate, in southern Peru. Her name is Vicentina Chuchicari Mamani, and like most people in the area, she spins her wool and makes her own clothes. People have been crafting their textiles in this way for more than a thousand years. Vicentina is 48 years old. She has spent every day of her life sitting in the lap of Ausangate, spinning wool from her herd of llamas and alpacas. She likes to be busy, she says. When I tried to take a photo of her at rest,…
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Another Arequipa Wedding Guest
Cute llama pix are a needed tonic to the barrage of awfulness in today’s world. A self-professed llama freak, from Eugene, Oregon, has asked for more camelids on this site. Of course, I oblige. Figure 1: Munching alpaca at Jose & Daniela’s wedding, photo c. Barbara Drake 2008
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Arequipa Wedding Guest
In March, El Fotografo, El Hijo and I went to a wedding in Arequipa, an old colonial city in southern Peru. The wedding reception was held at a sort of an ecological/conservation site, which included a mini farm with typical Peruvian animals: llamas, alpacas, sheep and a lone vicuna. There were about 250 people at the wedding, and when you got tired of being with them, you could head out back to hang out with animals. Most of them were friendly, except for the vicuna, who was high-strung and had a pen all to himself and liked to spit at people. This photo is either of a llama or an alpaca: the…