Guinea Pig

When we (andy and me) finished our Inca Trail we returned to Cusco and had a banquet of Cuy (pronounced coy) which to you and me is Guinea Pig. The first time I saw this dish being served was in my first port of call in Peru - the town of Puno on the shores of lake titikaka. It was basically a whole guineapig - teeth and claws n´all - but it looked like it had been flattened by a rolling pin or a heavy goods vehicle. She tred to maintain her honour and the pride of her host, but the look of disgust and fear on the chinese american girls face was not lost on anyone.

The next time i saw this ancient Incan delicacy being served up was on Andys first night in cusco and on this occasion time rather that being pancake like, the rotund little Cuy looked liked it had been skinned and dropped in a deep fat fryer - still alive by the look of alarm in its crispy little eyes.

When it was our turn to eat the furry little bugger it was baked, i think. I´ll happily confess that i couldnt eat much. Not only because of the claws, the eyes and the teeth, but because i thaving flashbacks to when i was a kid. My mate Bobby (aka Stephen Baulsom) had a garden full of the furry balls and when they went away i, on occasion, had to clean and feed them. The ungrateful buggers would bite and they stank worse than any farmyard and during one winter one of them froze to death like a furry stinky snowball.

So back in present day - while i picked at what little meat there was, andy wolffed his down merrily as he told stories of the Guinea Pigs he and his sister had known and loved as children.

After seeing the Nazca Lines, the amazing earthquake stricken town of Pisco and having some kick ass fun sand boarding in Huacachino, we had our last enocounter with the beast. On returning to Lima we were riding in a taxi to our hostel as we stopped at some traffic lights. All across South America i had seen people selling the most incredible things at traffic lights from blankets to acoustic guitars via fruits of all kinds. Anyway, the one thing that i had not seen, and that was proffered through the window on Andys side, was a dead guinea pig ready to cook and eat. Thankfully the lights changed and under our urgent shouts of VAMOS the driver wheel spinned away.

A crap pun thats been rattling round my head for a while now is that the song to accompany this posting should be ASK by the Smiths purely for the line : ¨Coyness is nice, but coyness can stop you from blah de blah de blah...¨



made me laugh anyway