Vicuña Roundup at 11,000 feet

I recently traveled with fellow volunteers Kim and Matt to my friend Eury’s site in Junín, a remote region that feels like it’s at the top of the world. Eury holds the unique title of being the highest-elevation Peace Corps volunteer, and the landscape there reminds me of Alaska – vast plains stretching endlessly in every direction, with towering blue mountains standing as a dramatic backdrop. It's hard to imagine people living in such an isolated, desolate place, where nature dominates and the cold is unrelenting.

To my surprise, the town itself was more charming than I expected, and the townspeople welcomed us as honored guests. They served us patasca (tripe soup) for breakfast, and for lunch, we enjoyed pachamanca, one of my favorite traditional dishes. Pachamanca is a delicious feast of slow-cooked meat – in this case, lamb and beef – along with sweet humitas (tamales), potatoes, and sweet potatoes. The ingredients are wrapped in herbs, placed between hot rocks, and buried in the earth for hours, allowing them to cook slowly. The result is tender, smoky, and incredibly flavorful meat, infused with the rich scent of the herbs and earth.

The main event of the visit, however, was witnessing the chaccu, or wild vicuña roundup. The entire community gathered at the top of a mountain for a ceremony to honor these animals, prized for their ultra-fine wool. I was curious to see how they would manage to round up around 500 vicuñas, but the method was surprisingly effective. The townspeople form a long line, each person holding onto a rope, and they walk across the hills, slowly driving the vicuñas into a V-shaped fence that funnels them into a high-walled corral.

Once inside, each vicuña is carefully selected and shorn of its valuable fibers. The process looked stressful for the animals, and a few were injured in the mouth from the struggle, but fortunately, no animals were trampled this year. After the shearing, the wool is sorted by quality, packed into small bags, and distributed among the community members, who can either sell or weave the fibers as they choose.