"You've seen one llama, you've seen them all"

Well apparently NOT, chicas. All those llamas we saw at the miserable Buenos Aires Zoo? The brown ones and the white ones? Yeah, the brown ones are guanaco, as I discovered when D brought the car to a screeching halt on the way back to Gallegos from the volcano so he could point them out to me. Guanaco certainly are very similar to llamas, the family agreed when I expressed my confusion, but they are not the same. They're much more beautiful, they said loyally. They're plentiful in Patagonia, the Indians used to hunt them all the time - some people still hunt them. As Bruce Chatwin mentions them about every five minutes (and they must be clearly marked at the zoo, I'm not sure how we missed that) I felt it was pretty pathetic I hadn't realised it before.

We also have to keep an eye out for those enormous birds that run everywhere, the family told me. You know, the really big ones. It took me quite a while before I got what they were talking about - ostriches. Duh. Unfortunately we didn't see any.

You've seen one llama, you've seen them all. Ha! Not so much, Becca!