Vicunas on the High Altiplano

Vicunas on the High Altiplano is an original illustration set in Lauca Altiplano, Northern Chile. It lies in the tropics, where the climate is cold semi-arid steppe.

A small herd of slender cinnamon-and-cream animals stands alert beside shallow pools, long necks up and white chest bibs showing. Golden bunchgrass and cushion plants cover the high plain. Two snow-streaked volcanic cones rise behind under intensely clear thin air, and one animal drinks.

Why does the vicuña carry the finest wool of any animal?

Vicuñas are wild, never saddled or loaded, and they carry the finest wool of any animal — an insulation problem solved by evolution rather than breeding. Cushion plants growing in dense low mounds are the same answer to cold and wind. Permanent wet meadows fed by snowmelt, ringed by volcanoes, at an altitude where the sky darkens overhead: this is high plateau, well above the tree line.

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