cuy

the reason guinea pigs are called 'cuy' here in ecuador is because of the noise they make. its an onomotopoeia, you see.
ever since i knew i was coming to south america ive been looking forward to the eating of a guinea pig. its a delicacy. i expected to find guinea pigs roasted on grills by street vendors and i expected it to be my main form of protein, but its not the case. its a special occasion food. i wanted my special occasion to be this week and my spanish teacher, enma, tried to accomodate since she knew of a place that serves cuy right near our school. the place was closed when i went with her to check, but when we came back to the school, she told another teacher about where we had been and why, and this teacher, fausto, knew of an even better place outside the city. furthermore, he knew that other people might want to eat cuy and so asked other people if they would want to and it was true that they did, so he decided to make a school trip out of it.

at 12 today, everyone from our spanish school + vincent gathered to leave to go eat cuy. we took a city bus out of the center of town, into the suburbs - behind the nearby hills that surround cuenca. the farther we got from the center, the more cows and sheep we saw, but i still believe we were in cuenca because we were still on a city bus and it still only costed $.25 to get where we needed to go. also, the further we got out of the center, the fewer and fewer people stayed on the bus wearing non-indigenous clothing.

eventually the bus passed by a lady on the street rotisserating cuy outside a restaurant and we got off at the next stop. i guess it was the cuy neighborhood. the restaurant, when we got to it, was one of teh nicest ive seen thus far in ecuador. it was double leveled and had outdoor seating in the front and the back. the floors were clean and there were tablecloths. the air smelled of cuy and our guide walked us through the restaurant to te grill where there was a huge grill with about 5 or 6 skewers about 3 inches in diameter cooking 2 guinea pigs each. the skerers were being rotated by a motor. the guinea pigs had been gutted, but were otherwise whole on the skewers, and were evidently put onto the skewers through their tiny ass holes and out of their mouths on the other side. their jaws were quite broken and spread open, but the teeth were baring and their nails were even on. stretched out and without fur, they must have been a bit more than a foot long each. i thought they didnt look like normal guinea pigs, what with the teeth and the nails and their svelt build, but anna, who had a guinea pig, thought they were quite recognizable. everyone took pictures and then we went and sat down.

before anything, they served us canelazo, which is an ecuadorian drink consisting of aguardiente (unrefined rum), cinnamon sticks, and heat. we were told it was traditional to begin feasts this way. then they brought us baskets full of popcorn, which i was happy about - popcorn being one of my three favorite foods. then came the mote and salad. however, his was different because a) there was a salad and it had avocados in it, b) the mote was not just bland, corn cournels, but this one was in some sort of curry sauce that actually made moté seem like a viable food. usually when i get moté i just dump it in soup and pretend it doesnt really exist. finally, they brought us plates of plain moté, which i found pointless to eat after the dressed up moté, along with small potatoes in a sightly liquified version of the curry sauce that went along with the first moté. then came the cuy itself, spread out on a plate as though it were doing a bellyflop.

the cuy was good and it actually tasted like pig moreso than chicken. i figured, as a default, that it would taste like chicken. i was wondering if its taste is what gave it the 'pig' in its english name... i was able to get a hind leg piece, which was the most meaty of all pieces. the meat was good, but it was gone soon, but the real taste lay in the skin. the real treat of eating a cuy, i found, was tearing at the skin and contemplating the pose of the cuy on the plate. before we ate everyone got to take a picture with the cuy on the plate, so there was much contemplation - and then much eating. i was glad to see that not very many people were averse to eating the guinea pig. even vegetarians and non re meat eaters got into it, you know, for the cultural value. the one person who didnt eat it spent the time dissecting the head and showing everyone the eyeball, which he somehow dug out of the head with a butter knife.