By building lodges and putting its beasts of burden back to work, an Andean village is back from the brink

By building lodges and putting its beasts of burden back to work, a village is back from the brink, writes Lance Richardson.

By building lodges and putting its beasts of burden back to work, an Andean village is back from the brink Dan20130328121033270177

At its height, the Inca Empire covered more than 2 million square kilometres, from modern-day Colombia down into Chile. This staggering dominion was due to one unusual advantage: a single soldier, equipped with a dozen llamas, could walk until he died from old age. Llamas provide everything from fleece for warmth to dried skin for sandals. Indeed, the Inca Empire died in 1533, but its mountain descendants, the Quechua people, dusted themselves off, loaded the llamas, and kept on walking right into the 20th century.

Then the Peru government built a highway through the Andes. Smallpox from Europe failed to finish these people, but asphalt is a different sort of disease. For hundreds of years Quechua in the highlands collected corn and fava beans in Pitumarca, or coca leaves and sugar in the Amazon, transporting everything across the mountains. "The reason we're poor now is because our llamas lost their jobs," one local told me recently, lamenting the arrival of trucks and shipping companies.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/travel/activity/great-outdoors/day-of-the-llamas-20130327-2gtk0.html#ixzz2P4tzZwyw

By building lodges and putting its beasts of burden back to work, an Andean village is back from the brink

By building lodges and putting its beasts of burden back to work, an Andean village is back from the brink

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