I don’t think you can visit Peru without seeing plenty of llamas and alpacas. We saw them everywhere! But to learn more about them, we actually visited a small educational center off the road near the Sacred Valley. Here we found displayed information on the difference between these two similar animals and their importance in Peruvian culture.

That was all well and good, but the best part about it for my daughter was having the chance to feed alfafa to the animals and pet them.

She loves animals. But there’s one thing she loves even more: little kids. And there was an adorable little girl playing with yarn while her mama spun and dyed the alpaca wool.

She quickly switched her attention from the animals to the little girl. She dropped to the ground and spoke Spanish with her, then played with her while the rest of us examined the different pots of natural dyes the women used to color the yarn.

From everything we learned on our trip, alpaca fur is still dyed using these traditional methods. That’s probably why it’s so expensive — and so beautiful.

It was one of the way-too-short stops on our trip. I think we could have spent the entire day feeding animals, watching the women spin fur into gold, and playing games with a little Peruvian girl.

Tell us about a time you wished a short stop on one of your trips could have lasted all day.