On that flat and barren island, there are exported alpacas grazing and locals sell alpaca products and delicious smoked fish.

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Blankets, wall hangings, handbags, table runners, alpaca-wool sweaters and scarves beam as brightly as the equatorial sun, lighting up the largest and finest craft market in South America.

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While always honouring tradition, Novoandina chefs have broadened Peruvian menus by placing these reinvigorated standards alongside more offbeat inventions, such as shrimp fishcakes and alpaca stroganoff.

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The latter also operates one of the best restaurants in town, serving pisco sours and fine Peruvian dishes such as alpaca with elderberry sauce in a rustically elegant dining room.

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And unlike gold in most places, bitcoins are actually used in the real world for example, you can use them to buy socks made from alpaca wool.

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Colonised by the Spanish in the 16th Century, Colca harbours more than a dozen of these small villages notable for their ornate churches, soporific main squares and esoteric agricultural and artisanal specialties, including embroidery and alpaca wool products.

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The equally ambitious Zigzag restaurant helmed by Swiss-born chef, Michel Hediger juxtaposes traditional alpaca steaks cooked on hot stones with interesting experiments in Peruvian-Italian fusion food, most notably gnocchi made with quinoa, a rice-like grain grown in the Andes that was once the sacred food of the Incas.

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