Photos

This a guanaco, photographed on a very miserable day of rain in the Torres Del Paine National Park in southern Chile.

The Andean mountains are home to 4 species of South American camelid - the llama, alpaca, guanaco and vicuña.

The llama and alpaca have been domesticated for thousands of years, while the guanaco and vicuña are found only in the wild. The llama is the largest of the four; used as a pack-animal, it's capable of carrying up to 25kg. In some areas, such as southern Peru, it's used for meat. Also, in remote areas, llamas are sheared for their course wool, of which they yield about 4kg every 2 years.

The alpaca is generally a little smaller and is domesticated almost exclusively for its wool, which is finer than sheep's wool and the preferential wool for clothing in the highlands. An alpaca yields about 5kg of wool every 2 years.

The guanaco is like a smaller version of the llama and is mainly found in Argentina and Chile. They are predominantly an orangey-brown colour and are recognisable due to their black faces. They are totally wild and all attempts at domesticating this species have failed.

I took this photo of a guanaco on my first day in the National Park and the weather was terrible. Very cold, dark and windy and with almost a continuous drizzle for the entire day. I think that is probably why there is a bit of a "fuzzy feeling" to this image, I think it's the drizzle and some drops of rain on the camera lens... or maybe it's my bad camera work! ;)

Regards,

Rich