Last road trip: Walking with Llamas

Time for the last little road trip we did when we rented the car, we went walking with llamas. This is another one we had been planning on for a long time. We have a traveling guidebook to Austria, and it had mentions of llama walks. Trekking and otherwise walking in the nature are very popular in Austria. We do enjoy walking, but to a certain extent, so we did not want to go for too long treks. When we read about these llama walks where you get to walk around in nature while leading a llama as you companion sounded like fun. They were recommended for families with children so we figured the walks would not be too difficult or draining. Booking the walk needed a little more work as Anne had contacted the organizers by email, but they didn’t speak great English, so they asked us to get a German speaker to call them and set it all up. Luckily our landlord helped us with it and called for us and booked the time. Once there they spoke good enough English to at least give us the instructions to handle the llamas. 

When we got to the llama farm which was about 50 kilometres away from Graz, we were assigned to our partner llamas. Anne’s llama was Willi and he was a calm no drama llama and the two got well along. I was given a llama named Moritz and they warned me that he is quite strong and sometimes a little stubborn. Mainly this showed in that he didn’t want to walk behind some of the other llamas so he would just stop and let the ones behind us go by. In the end we ended up walking at the back of the group, which was ok for me. Only little incident we had was that I once didn’t notice that Moritz stood face to face with another llama and there was some clear tension and our guide had to step in and pull Moritz to the side, but after that it went well.

The walk itself wasn’t extremely long, about two hours all and all. We mainly walked on a forest path up a hill next to the farm and on top of the hill we walked some way by some beautiful fields. The original plan I think was to walk down a separate route, but due to the heat and burning sun the guide decided that it was best to walk back down the forest road where we had some shade. That was probably for the best as some of the llamas had not been sheared lately and they still had heavy coats of fur. Still walking in the forest was fun, stopping now and then to let the llamas eat or do their other business and for the humans to take a sip of water. Then we got back to the farm and said goodbye to our partners for the day and went back home. 

Here's a bunch of llamas

Some instructions on the llama handling

hello

The llama farm was in a valley

Me and my new buddy Moritz

Here's Willi, Anne's llama

Moritz wanting to snack on the trees

Happy boys

Reaching the top of the hill

View of the valley was great form the top of the hill

The group was about 15 people and 9 llamas

Road sign ahead

Some teepee tents on the farm land

After we got back to the farm couple of the llamas decided for a little wrestiling

"Good bye"

Llama walk was a good time and a little different way of doing trekking. They also offered longer walks that could be interesting, but I don’t think there will be time as it is the second to last week before we’re leaving Graz. I still have a little bit of schoolwork to finish this week, but next week will be all about saying goodbye to our dear Graz.