Vicunea vs Apaca: Baby Apaca vs Maybe Apaca

I instantly felt in love with Apaca when I put my hands on the softness and warmth of a black scarf made of super fine baby apaca for the first time. That was in a store called Sol on a narrow ally in Cusco. We would of course go back later and bought it. As a matter of fact, I think we systematically combed the whole Cusco for apaca. Pete, our friend who traveled with us, was a shopaholic, not that he liked to admit it. He even crated things that we must look for, sort of like a theme shopping. Yeah, we all absolutely need a crazy apaca hat for ski this winter!

All over Andes in Peru, one can see three major exotic mammals: llyma, apaca and vicunea. They have been domesticated by Incans for thousands of years for their hair. Llymas produce a thick and coarse fiber that is mostly known for its strength. It makes great ropes for instance. Apaca is the most commonly used fiber for weaving. Baby apaca is more sought after due to the conspicuous reason, it is a lot softer. There are many grades: super fine baby apaca is followed by baby apaca which is better than just apaca. There is also royal baby apaca, which by touch, I think it's more or less like teen apaca, falling in between super fine baby and just baby. After that, there is venerable Vicunea, possibly the cutest mammals I have ever seen. Big sensitive eyes, soft short hair, and a delicate deer like build with an equally delicate and shy disposition. Their hair worth a fortune though. First, they cannot be easily domesticated like Apaca. Second, they just don't produce a lot of hair. Yet what is harvested from them are the softest natural fiber in the world.one scarf we had the honor to touch cost about 3000usd. We never bothered to check the price of a coat. Not that we didn't want to. It was locked away like gold jewelries anyway.

We were warned by many locals about baby apaca because it can be maybe apaca. So we steered away from most of the stores and headed straight to the two very best, Kuna and Sol. It was an addictive experience. After exhausting all the stores in Cusco, we managed to add the weight of our luggage in Puno (two apaca blankets) and Lima (a woo-so-soft jakcet for pete and a few more scarfs for us). In the end, I don't think there was any apaca left for us to buy. I told myself I was going to import them in my future art/design store and share with all Bostonian, which made a lot easier for me to justify my purchasing as merchandise "sampling".