When I was a little girl, my artistic creations followed the mainstream trend – horses, unicorns and lions. Up to this day I still remember how Mufasa died A new generation of Disney animals emerged, but unicorns have kept their high status in girls’ hearts until the present day. So which animals are trendy nowadays? According to my friend Petr, a school teacher, the female juvenile society has been taken over by flamingos and llamas. As an FYI, the dinosaur classic hasn’t changed for boys. Now kids, let me tell you a grown-up story about llamas. They can dance, in their own way.
January 2023. I was coming back from the Christmas vacation, fully charged with ideas. For example, I decided to organize a team event at work.
Dear colleagues,
1 hour away, in the deep forests of Liechtenstein, you can find magical creatures with fabulous hairstyles.
Let’s make a hike with llamas and alpacas. Let’s also have a fondue in the middle of a forest!
Price: 70 CHF/person, llama, fondue and soft drinks included
Time: 18:00 – 20:30
If we are more than 10 people, the event will be cheaper, but some people will have to share a llama.
More info here: Lama- & Alpakahof Triesenberg
Best regards,
Sandra
Since my team owns an inflatable T-rex costume for special occasions, I was pretty sure that these big kids would enjoy a llama experience as well. For our new intern, this was one of the first emails in her mailbox. And she was thrilled to join! Welcome to the family.
The weather was threatening our event until the last day. Heavy snowfall and cold temperature would not work was a leisurely stroll through a forest. The weather gods were kind to us and stopped the snow at least. Thus we left work on a random Monday evening, heading abroad. Our destination was a quaint village covered in snow.
The llama owner, Marc, welcomed us in a good mood, wearing something which could have once been his llama.
He was standing next to a stable with 10 llamas, alpacas and one llamapaca (alpallama?). Yes, there is a funny story about the combined animal. The stable in front of us contains only males. The females and children are kept separately which is quite an effective form of contraception. Still, it’s not 100 % reliable. A desire to reproduce cannot always be extinguished by wooden fences. A small alpaca male made a quest of his lifetime. He jumped over the fence, found the females a bit further down the road, and jumped inside of their stable. If you think this was hard already, no no, this was just a warm-up. The alpaca’s one and only love happened to be a much taller llama female. The baby must have required a unique collaboration.
Alpacas are more vicious, so Marc entrusted us only with his llamas. Nevertheless, llamas are peculiar animals and need instructions how to handle them. Marc gave us a crash course on How they trained the llamas and How to walk a llama. There is a specific spot on the neck where they like being touched. If you stroke them there, they stop walking. If you bond with them, you can give them a hug. Below you can see what happens when a hippie tries to hug a llama right away. The llama respectfully kept his distance. No spit involved this time!
According to Marc, llamas only spit on each other and it mostly concerns food ownership. The danger arises when you stand in between a llama and his food. Despite being regularly fed, any piece of dry frozen grass looked like food in llamas’ eyes. These high class animals also have their own rituals. The toilet is on a specific spot on the trail.
They walk in a specific order that gets reshuffled in a completely random moment.
As you peacefully guide your llama on a bridle, an unknown trigger can cause a fight for the first place. Your llama starts pulling so hard that you don’t have a chance to perform the stopping stroke that you learned earlier. The uphill sprint also ends very randomly. I keep wondering how llamas communicate with each other. I don’t remember hearing any llama sounds except heavy breathing. Random spitting on the ground? Sniffing each other’s mood?
If they could smell our discomfort, for sure they didn’t care. They seemed to enjoy sneaking from the back, very close to our heads. There was a voice nagging in my head: “Explain what happened, Carl!” A colleague was shouting a pointless request down below: “Hey, control your llama!” His own llama was the wildest steed in the herd, soon to complete his breeding duties. The night was bright and fresh, with beautiful views over Vaduz in the valley below. Lantern in one hand, llama in the other. At some point we managed to bond with our animals and it wasn’t clear who was leading who. We haven’t met anyone except a very confused woman and even more confused dog.
A little bit further and we finally arrived to our destination. Imagine a winter paradise on a forest road. Lights, fire and drinks prepared by Marc’s wife Anna-Lena.
First things first – we had to park our llamas on wooden poles.
Fondue pots were slowly preparing liters of melted cheese. Each one of us strapped an apron, filled it with bread and grabbed a long fork. Marc was an entertaining host of the whole experience, sharing very passionately how useful llamas are. As we were having a late dinner, llamas were peacefully rechewing dinner from their stomachs.
Going downhill was more of a sprint. The llamas again changed the order, this time it seemed like a reverse of the initial configuration. My llama Gypsy was one of the slowest, speeding up very reluctantly. I gave him a bit of a freedom and he appreciated it – I could hug him back in the village! I quickly checked out a shop with llama products, paid and we hit the road back. This is how my first visit to Liechtenstein came to an end. What an experience!
Going for a llama hike is a strange activity. Most of the people who hear the story just raise an eyebrow and wait for a picture as a proof.
Unfortunately, there was one person working for Basler Kantonalbank who quickly made an assumption that strange = suspicious. As a result, he blocked my debit card.
I spent 30 minutes explaining to three different people in the bank that my payment to Lamahof in Liechtenstein was intentional. I can see their point of view. I paid 420 CHF for all of us and once I entered the wrong PIN. But still, if you steal someone’s card, would you take five friends and go on a llama hike? What can I say, people are strange, but it’s fun to be strange together.
