We always knew this moment would come. Although, to be honest, even during today when we knew Mike had set off on the six hour drive south with the llamas loaded in the trailer, we hadn't really taken it on board.
I had planned to take lots of pictures of the arrival, and moving the animals into our field, but it all proved too hectic and demanding. The track to the top of the field proved a bit too difficult for Mike to back the trailer up, so he had to stop some 60 metres short. This then meant that we had to take the llamas in two batches up a strange track to an unknown destination. OK, probably, for the males who were used to going for walks . . . . but how would the pregnant females react?
Mike climbed into the trailer and we waited, slightly worried by the crashes and bangs from inside. It seems that as Mike fixed leads to some llamas, the others got tangled up in them. Eventually all went quiet and Mike asked us to open the rear trailer door. There he was, smiling and cheerful as usual, and we were off.
The first batch went quite smoothly - one of the males used to walking (Valentine), the young female (Anastasia), and the less pregnant female (Elif). With quite a lot of persuasion, we eventually managed to get them up the track and down to the field. They all set off to explore, while we went back to the trailer.
Of course, the remaining three were by now pretty agitated. One of them was a trained male (Duc), but the other two were the stud male (Pedro) and the very heavily pregnant female, Fatma. I think we might have hesitated - but realistically there was no point, because there was no alternative. It probably only took two or three minutes, but it felt a lot longer! No injuries, although both Mike and Fatma took fairly dramatic falls as they came down the path to the field.
The trauma seemed very rapidly forgotten - and the llamas behaved exactly as Mike had predicted, walking round the perimeter of the field to check it out, and then getting down to some eating and drinking.
Duc seems pretty relaxed
All three of the females check out some of the trees on the perimeter
All welcome some grass and a snack of hard food
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