Mission Accomplished: Guinea Pig

Guinea Pig, or Cuy as its known here (for the squeaking sound it makes as you're killing it, seriously), is a known delicacy of the northern Andes cultures. Baños is not a traditional Andean village; it's a tourist ghetto cesspool. So naturally, they have it to try. An old woman sits outside the center market, roasting guinea pigs on spits over an open fire.

In life, guinea pigs are cute. In death, they are shaved and taught, skin charred and crispy, with mouths frozen in a horrifying death scream, jaws protruding ugly. When it came time to eat, she pulled it off the spit, took a cleving knife to the head and hind quarters, and gave me the guinea pig equivilent to a drumstick, the leg and foot still very much intact.

And like a drumstick, the dark meat is the best part. The skin is kinda thick and tough to eat, and the meat itself is a bit chewy and gamey. But it has a satisfying salty taste to it, and trying to rip a small mammal's leg to pieces to slurp up every last piece of meat is oddly satisfying to the primeval carnivore deep in our collective minds. Didn't taste bad either. Paired with a fresh green coconut hacked up in front of you to slurp the coconut milk directly from the husk, it makes a pretty good meal at 4 bucks.

So today I ate a guinea pig and rapelled down a 100 foot waterfall. Typical day, really.