Waiter, there's a rat on my plate

"What's for dinner, mum?" "Fluffy, son."

Thailand has it's pad thai and fried insects, Australia has it's kangaroo steaks, but Peru has something even more delicious: roasted guinea pig.

We made a couple of friends in Australia that we've bumped into around the world (they're called Alex and Ruth and they have a website too), so when we met them again in Cusco, we made a pact that we wouldn't leave until we'd eaten guinea pig (or 'cuy' as they call it here).

We've never been confronted by such a terrifying meal. I'm still suspicious whether it actually was a guinea pig - it was HUGE and overhung our plate. Probably a rat. It didn't have much meat on it or taste for that matter, but the tiny scrapings we ate were horrible and pink, like turkey leg dipped in death. Some of the beast's innards were intact, including the kidneys, and any gaps were filled with rancid stuffing.

Amy did a stirling job of getting through our rodent, while I pulled it's dead head into different expressions (depsite it being roasted, it was still possible to make the thing blink and waggle it's tongue). For some reason, me playing with the creature's severed head put Alex and Ruth off their guinea pig, the wimps.

I once told a Bolivian friend we made in La Paz that in the UK, we keep guinea pigs as pets and would never think of eating them. "But why, when they're so tasty?" he replied.

It's unlikely that we'll ever try guinea pig again, though I'd still rather have a second helping of it, than try Peru's other famous dish: ceviche - basically raw fish, with a bit of lemon. Food poisoning, anyone?