A shaggy business

摘要

As her family has for generations past, Juana Vasquez gets up before dawn to move her herd of alpacas, now more than a thousand strong, from their pens to pasture on the high plains near Puno, some 4,400 metres (14,400 feet) above sea level in southern Peru. As it has been since Inca times, the shaggy alpaca, a South American cameloid with fine, long wool, is the economic mainstay of Ms Vasquez's village of Pinaya. But Ms Vasquez is not a typical alpaca herder. She attended a nearby university, and is trying to turn subsistence herding into a viable business.