The main event for our second Tuesday was to pay someone to walk their alpacas around a mountain.

Continuing our trek around the Inishowen Peninsula, we arrived at the summit of a small hill to where the “Wild Alpaca Way” was located. Our guide, John, welcomed us and brought us over to a covered shed where we were given the reins of our assigned companion. Isabelle got “Todd” and I got “Charlie”.

We were lead up the hill to where the rest of the group was staging pictures. There were four other people, a family originally from South Africa who who now lived in Donegal, already leading their assigned friends.

Our task was to lead the alpacas. What really happened was that we’d take a few steps and the alpacas would stop. John would have to call them to move, and they would…for a while. Todd and Charlie were the slowest of the group, and the most difficult to keep motivated.

The trip took us around the top of the mountain, and we stopped several times for pictures, as you can tell.

At the end of the tour the alpacas were penned in, and we were each given a double handful of feed to provide a snack for our trail-mates.

In addition to our six friends, we had two “loose” alpacas who followed behind us through the entire trip. One of them had a harness and lead, but the other was unfettered.

Ultimately, it was good exercise, although we were more at the mercy of the whims of the alpacas we were leading than we were the ones in control, but it was a lot of fun to pal around with alpacas for a while, and to get a bunch of cool photos for the wall at home.