Still Life

I've arrived in Cusco, Peru. As usual I'm wandering about town to get a feel for the city. Maybe once I understand Peru and it's people, David & I might finally be able to defeat Nobby Solano's 2003 Peru national team in Pro Evolution Soccer 3, a feat that eluded us in over fourteen attempts.

Cusco sits in a shallow valley surrounded by moderately sized mountains, thinly covered in some green vegetation & trees. At the outskirts of the city, I'm climbing the stairs into the residential district. There's a lot of stairs, but I'm not suffering so much as I'd expect. Maybe I'm getting better at this uphill lark.

There's a festival in the streets around one of the squares. I think it's Corpus Christi or something. The square is lined with full of food stalls and rife with Peruvians. The very apparent speciality of Peru is guinea pig. From the look of it, I estimate that the preparation of the animal is to shave it, cook it at a hundred-and-sixty degrees Celsius for thirty minutes, deep fry it and plate it up. At each stall, the rodents are loosely piled in pyramid formation. They're in their entirety, still with hands, feet, faces, teeth - everything. Like the apple in the mouth of a suckling pig, the rodents are often posed with a big chili pepper. Unfortunately, I've already eaten.

In the northern part of town, I nose into a backstreet market. It's full of cages of chickens or ducks of various ages, then one cage of fifty fluffy guinea pigs. Just to be sure, I ask the guinea pig man: "¿Para comida?" - for food? These are twenty-five pence Sterling each. The restaurants are most often charging thirteen Pounds, which is over double anything else on their menus.

In the evening, I'm out looking for food. The nearby festival is being packed up, but there's a few stalls still open. I'm made the offer, and so I take a seat on a bench for a plate guinea pig, including a foot, an anonymous sausage, some kind of bread and something I can't identify - it's a thin, pale, stringy, elastic five centimetre length with little bobbles branching off it. I ask for a fork and knife, but that's not how things are done out here. I'm not a fan of guinea pig. Maybe it's better hot.