A half hour later we pull into Chinchero, Old Inca walls punctuated with trapezoidal alcoves line the colonial town center, which is framed by whitewashed building and tiled roofs. I make my through a portal to the open-air market, where women in colorful skirts, shawls, and broad-rimmed hats have set out their weavings and wares. They sit patiently beside their offerings, ready to bargain. Visitors mill about, some haggling, others walking off with brightly embroidered bags or square weaving called llicllas in Quechua.
A few blocks away, down a narrow road, I spot a sign by a double door announcing the cooperative. Inside I find Callanaupa giving a weaving demonstration to a large group of foreign weavers. In the distance, the Urubamba mountain range-some of its jagged peaks capped by ice-rises from the Sacred Valley of the Inca, which is watered by a river the Inca considered holy.
I watch her place bundles of spun white alpaca wool into a metal vat now bubbling with hot black dye made from a fungus. The guest weavers take notes or use their video recorders to film the scene. As Callanaupa stirs the vat, she tells the story of how she rescued the knowledge of this black dye from a remote community she visited in the Andes
“There was only one elderly man who remembered how this dye was made,” she narrates, churning the black brew with a long wooden stake. “He took me into the jungle and showed me a plant. I noticed it had a black fungus growing on it. They had not used that fungus for dye in years.”
Out in the courtyard, the women from the cooperative begin serving lunch. One, wearing a red-and-black outfit typical of Chinchero, hands me a plate of reasted guinea pig with a side of small, freeze-dried chuno potatoes; guinea pigs and chuno are to Andean Peru what cheeseburgers and fries are to the United States.
“Would you like a mate de coca?” she asks. I nod, and she returns with a steaming cup and a big smile. The feeling here is of a large family reunion, the colorbully attired local women milling around drably dressed gringos like me.
“I began coming here in the late 1990s,” he shares. “Back then, younger weavers were producing synthetic weavings because the tourist mostly couldn’t tell the difference. Those weavers were able to turn out in a few days something a traditional weaver might spend a month on. Then Nilda showed up.”
Working carefully on his guinea pig, he fill me in on Callanaupa.
He puts his fork down
“She ‘s a powerhouse. She has founded cooperatives in a number of communities and they have more business than they know what to do with.”
I locate Callanaupa and blurt out my question.
“What about vicuna wool-are any of your weavers using it?”
THAT IS HOW, A WEEK LATER, I find myself rounding up vicunas in the Andes near the remote southern Peru village of Picotani. Within an hour of plugging the wall in our human circle, I watch as the vicunas press together like cattle and turn surprisingly calm. They are herded easily into corrals arranged farther down the valley.
“It is estimated that around two million vicunas lived in the Andes at the time of the Inca Empire; they were protected. Then the Spaniards arrived and started to hunt them down for their meat.”
Vega steps forward suddenly to help two men bring a vicuna to the ground and hold it still. Over his shoulder he continues, “By the 1960s, perhaps 6,000 vicunas were left in these high mountains.”
“By 1981, Peru had 75,000 vicunas," Vega says. “Today, we have nearly 190,000. It’s a miracle,” he exclaims, helping lift the newly shorn vicuna back to its feet.
The vicunas rebounded so much, Vega tell me, that in 2003 Peru declared a national chaccu week to be held every june. As a result, nearly 200 chaccus are carried out each year.
Vega and I walk around the side of the shearing house as men working in pairs bring out shorn vicunas that look almost naked without their fleece. The animals are let go one by one and bound directly for the brown hills, free again.
Back inside the enclosure I watch as a vicuna fleece is rolled up, placed in a plastic bag, labeled, and carefully weighed. I pick up another bag. It feels as light as gossamer; an entire vicuna fleece will weigh barely seven ounces.
“What do they do with it now?” I ask.
“These people are herders, not weavers,” Vega remind me. “The community sells the fleece, but the price is so high that local weavers can’t afford it.” Only a few places, Vega adds, have mastered the process of weaving vicuna wool on machines.
“If you want to find clothes made with vicuna wool, you should visit Arequipa. That’s where a lot of it ends up.”
Near the main square, Plaza de Armas, I spot Kuna, an upscale store that sells high quality alpaca clothing and, I’ve been told, clothing crafted with vicuna wool. Amid stacks of shawls and sweaters woven with alpaca wool I discover an alcove displaying what I’ve traveled thousands of miles to see: garments made with premium cinnamon colored vicuna wool.
I eye vicuna-wool capes that are going for nearly US$7,000, shawls going for US$1,000, and scarves going for US$600. These prices are a third of what I would pay outside Peru.
I finger one garment; it feels like feather down. Irresistible. I choose a scar displayed in a wooden box. With it comes a card that confirms the wool’s provenance and charts the recent resurgence of the vicuna.
That might, I dine in a rustic restaurant called Sonccollay-a Cuechua word loosely meaning “from the heart”-which looks out on Arequipa’s 17th-century white stone cathedral and the landscaped Plaza de Armas. The restaurant bills itself as serving Inca and pre-Inca dishes. Its owner and chef, Walter Bustamante Cano, reminds me of the Spanish actor Javier Bardem.
I have my doubts about what meat cooked on lava stones will taste like, but on digging into an entrada of native pepper stuffed with corn compote, followed by a slab of alpaca meat served up with a side of roasted potatoes and squash, I realize that the Inca-at least the elite class-may have eaten quite well. The food is absolutely delicious.
Gazing out over the Plaza de Armas from my table, I open the wooden box that contains my new vicuna scarf- a scarf that any Inca emperor surely would have admired. And I cannot help but be thankful that the transformation of vicuna wool into textiles, along with other vanishing Andean traditions, has been so patiently rescued from the past. The world, I have no doubt, is richer for them.