The July Peru trip was amazing—think volcanoes, alpacas, and purple corn (of course a lot of troubleshooting and factory visits too). I joined Nicolette, our manager of development, on her trip to work on new fabrics and yarns for the Fall 08 season. This brought us to Arequipa, a city in the southern Andes on July 25, 2007, one of the best (and longest) days “at the office” I’ve ever had.

3:20 am, This is Your Wake-Up Call
We can’t help feeling as if there has been some mistake, but we actually set the alarm to wake us up now in our Lima hotel room. We are pushing the rule about arriving to the airport two hours before our domestic flight—a regulation we find ourselves at odds with as New Yorkers.

7:25 am, Arequipa
Just woke up on the plane to glimpse the mountains out the window. In Arequipa, at about 7700 feet, the sun is strong and the air is crystalline. A man next to the window crosses himself just before we land. Nicolette and I get a quick photo together on the tarmac in front of Chachani, a snow-capped volcano that rises about 20,000 feet into the southern sky. Driving into town we pass a painted wall welcoming us to Arequipa, tierra gentil y generosa, kind and generous land.
By some sleight of fate Nicolette ended up working in fashion, instead of as a veterinarian, dog breeder, or groomer. She is a serious animal lover and I opt not to point out a sign for Mundo Alpaca(Alpaca World) to her as we pass by, for fear I won’t be forgiven if we don’t get to visit.

9:30 am, Mundo Alpaca!
It turns out Alpaca World is our first stop, being the commercial center a yarn mill we are seeing. Peru is the leading producer of alpaca yarns, and we are visiting one of the oldest exporters. Juan, the commercial manager, introduces us to some of the animals and passes us each an armful of dried straw to feed them. He tells us the difference between Huacayo (curlier fleeced) and Suri (long straight-haired) alpacas. Rosa and Pancho are our favorites. Rosa is a chestnut-colored Huacayo with giant ebony eyes and long sleepy lashes. Pancho's coat is varying shades of grey and white. He’s special to the mill because he was born on their 75th anniversary, and wears a red yarn necklace to commemorate it.
The mill has a social responsibility program to help preserve the traditional Incan handlooms. Women from the highlands weave amazingly intricate motifs on old-fashioned wooden looms at Mundo Alpaca and the mill also runs workshops in the mountains to ensure the custom is not lost on younger generations. We peer into ceramic dishes holding natural dyestuffs like cochinilla, an insect-derived red powder that's used to color yarns, as well as many red apertifs.

We continue on our tour and get a chance to see some of the mill’s oldest machines from their 75 years of business, which are lovingly restored and displayed, all painted a uniform teal green. Most of the machines are European and some date as far back as the 1930s.

10:30 am, Ancient Abilities and Modern Machinery
Raul, one of the mill’s employees, drives us across town to the warehouse and mill to see exactly how the wool is processed, now that the steps are clearer thanks to the vintage machine display.

The first and most interesting step that we didn’t get to see at Mundo Alpaca was the sorting of the fleece. After the animals are shorn, their fleece is divided by staple length, color, and fineness. Skilled Andean women surrounded by giant mounds of wool ranging from vanilla-colored to charcoal grey are doing this by hand, separating the different kinds of wool guided by touch and sight alone. We learn that baby alpaca and coarse alpaca yarns come from the same animal, and it is here that the grades are separated.

We move onto the cleaning part of the process and see monstrous versions of the pristine vintage machines we had seen at Mundo Alpaca. But not all the equipment here is new. One of the scouring lines in operation has been washing since 1908 and is chugging happily alongside one just a few years old, swishing the wet fleece around in a roiling bath.

After passing by machines cleaning, shaking and combing the wool we visit the quality control room where quality and coarseness are confirmed—the superbaby alpaca feels like a cloud between my fingers.

11:20, The Spinning Mill
It’s hard to believe that it is not even noon yet, and not just because we are exhausted. When we step outside onto the driveway the mountain sun is fierce, but feels great on my face after touring the humid lockers where the yarns are stored. We walk to another hangar that houses the spinning mill, where the cleaned, combed and homogenized wool is spun into yarn and dyed. 

Giant cylinders of dyed pure alpaca called “tops” are everywhere in matte saturated shades of orchid, marigold, and olive. This step has another quality control room, this time cataloging all solid and mélange colors that the mill has manufactured and blended—like a library card catalog with volumes of colors instead of books.

We see boxes of yarn bound for Bolivia, and Raul tells us it is destined to be knit into socks. Hanks of hand-painted yarns in circus-like shades are stuffed into clear plastic bags, waiting to be shipped to stores in the US, where they will be sold for hand-knitting.

1:45 Chicha Morada
We are deliriously tired by the time we sit down for a quick lunch before our next mill visit. Who knows if it’s the altitude or just exhaustion from all the travel, but we are too out of it to question whether or not the ceviche (lime-cured uncooked fish) ordered for us is the wisest choice in the middle of the mountains. It tastes good, but the highlight of the meal is a pitcher of Chicha Morada, a beautiful eggplant-colored slightly viscous juice made from the giant purple corn that grows in Peru. It is surprisingly sweet and we chug it like little kids with Kool-Aid.

2:30 Second Mill, Slowing Down
Nicolette and I are waiting in the conference room of our second mill of the day, trying to keep our eyes open. We finally get to see their books of Fall 08 yarns, which are hot off the presses, and are happy to see an eco-collection featuring organic cottons. We both manage to make it through a tour of the exact same process we went through in the morning. It’s a good review, but we both resemble zombies at this stage.

4:40 Get Thee to a Convent
On the suggestion of the matriarch of our favorite sweater factory in Lima, we want to spend the last few hours of daylight exploring a Monastery in the middle of the city called Santa Catalina. Someone from the mill puts us in a cab and tells the driver where to take us, which translates roughly as, “These girls are foreign, please leave them at the door of the convent.” I remember that I have a Milky Iberico, (Peruvian chocolate bars that taste mildly of coffee and cinnamon) stashed in my bag and break off a piece for Nicolette, a piece for the driver and a piece for me. We are instantly revived.

The monastery is like a walled city within a city. Outside the streets are crowded and loud with the honking horns of rush hour traffic. Within the walls of Santa Catalina the air is quiet and still, the last rays of sun drift over cinnamon-colored walls of painted volcanic rock. There are tiny nooks with Madonnas in stone shrines and cobalt caverns opening onto cobblestoned courtyard after courtyard. Tourists wander about speaking in hushed mostly Spanish tones, and indeed we feel blessed to be here in the sideways sunlight.

Santa Catalina is one of those sacred spaces, regardless of religion, in which keeping track of time seems irrelevant, if not impossible. We wander through its paths and plazas and near the end we see a steep stone staircase climbing the outside of one of the walls. Nicolette and I shrug a “why not?” at one another and start to climb it—now we are really feeling the altitude in our legs. When we reach the top we can see all of Santa Catalina and much of the surrounding city bathed in dusk-light, with the two volcanoes, Misti and Chachani watching over. Misti is snowcapped, conical and totally majestic, and looks completely different from Chachani, which is dry and red in the setting sun. Chachani alone, with a giant palm and the monastery walls in the foreground, reminds me of photos of 1960s Marrakech.

6:10 pm, Power Shopping
Running on fumes, we dart into the souvenir shops that light up the dark streets in search of gifts to bring back with us. Giant alpaca hats and piles of multicolored mittens are gorgeous but almost unthinkable when we consider the sweltering city heat awaiting us in New York. Nicolette almost buys a giant woven rug for her apartment but balks, thinking she may be too caught up in the moment. Always the sensible shopper, she talks me out of a white alpaca hat that makes a beachball-sized halo around my head. We are delirious and drained and need to find our way back up the narrow cobble-stoned streets where our bags and ride to the airport are waiting for us.

8:00 pm, Pasteles de Queso
We use our coins to buy warm flakey pastries filled with melted cheese and wrapped in greasy paper at the airport café and take them to the gate where we savor every last bite. We joke happily that security allowed the cheesy empanadas through after I had a heated discussion in the US just days before over whether or not my chicken salad was considered a liquid, and thus a security threat being in excess of three ounces.

11:30 pm, Sweet Sueños
We are in a dark quiet taxi from the Lima airport on our way back to our hotel, though we could happily both just sleep in here. Never again will we take one of our sweaters for granted. We are utterly exhausted after just following one small part of the path necessary for creating them. Tomorrow we’ll go back to the sweater factory with a new appreciation for the yarns in our sweaters, and a lot of photos. If only we could have brought back Pancho and Rosa.

photos by Nicolette Carbo