My Visit to Heaven (The Alpaca Loom)
Alpacas. If you know me at all, you know my love of alpacas. Every gifting occasion, I get more than my fair share of alpaca/llama related items from t-shirts, to pencil cases, to stickers, to measuring spoons, to make-up cases, to folders, to socks. I’ve yet to receive alpaca ears, but I’m patiently waiting 😊
Our “niece” Nora (she insists on calling us Auntie Carrie and Unkle Jim 🥰) even made me a little alpaca as part of her Little World Wanderers lesson on Peru – you have probably seen pictures of Carla Ann the Adventuring Alpaca on our journey. She is probably the most best traveled Alpaca in the world.
(Side note: if you home school your kids, or heck, even if you don’t, check out our friend Beth’s Little World Wanderers lessons. Beth is a teacher and has developed this really great multicultural curriculum, which she shares for free.)
Whenever an opportunity to spend time with alpacas arise, I’m on it. Actually, when we travel I often open up Google Maps and search for alpaca farms (and Dunkin Donuts). I’m a fan of seeing the unusual and the one-off type stuff and alpaca farms and foreign Dunkin Donuts fit that world for me. (As do one-off museums like the Esperanto Museum in Vienna, the wholesale flower market in Ho Chi Min City, the Pinball Museum in Vegas, and the world's largest easel in Goodland, Kansas.)
Llamas are worth visiting too, but they are quite different than alpacas.
Ears- alpacas have short ears; llamas have long banana-shaped ears
Size- alpacas weigh around 150 pounds, llamas are twice the size at around 300 pounds
Face- alpacas have squished up faces/shorter faces; llamas have longer faces.
Use- alpacas are (usually) bred for their fiber; llamas are (usually) bred to be used as pack animals.
I say usually because, in Peru, I’m told that they breed them for meat as well! 😮😭
So, now that you know a little about alpacas, let me tell you how excited I was to find that there was an alpaca farm called The Alpaca Loom not too far outside of Cape Town. It's not just a farm, but a coffee shop and petting zoo plus an opportunity to meet the alpacas during a barn tour, take them for a walk, and even DO AN OBSTACLE COURSE with them! Yes, that’s right, an obstacle course. Of course, there were many photo ops and videos to memorialize this event. I think the staff took more pictures than even I would have taken. I have over five hundred photos from two hours at the farm.
The Alpaca Loom has over three hundred alpacas. Plus they are expecting 80+ crias and… you can even “adopt” one (not adopt and take home, more of a “sponsor” type thing, although you can adopt/buy them and bring them home too). Just the thought of having my very own alpaca gives me the chills! I may have to adopt one and name him Annyong (if this sounds weird, you are obviously not a fan of the TV show Arrested Development).
People keep asking what our favorite thing we did in Cape Town has been. Shark diving, seal snorkeling, safari, hiking, the aquarium, meeting amazing people, outdoor movies, the views, etc…is it weird to say the alpaca farm?
I've attempted to pare down the pictures to only the best of the best—that's why it's taken so long to write this post. So. Many. Good. Pictures. Enjoy!
