Day 97 - Puno I had to sympathise with the rodent as it stared up at me with a fixed grin. Back home it would have had a cosseted lifestyle. It would have been fed and shown affection and kept safe. And when it's time was up it would have been placed with care into a shoebox and lowered gently into a hole at the bottom of the garden as its (human) family looked on in a reverent silence. This guinea pig's life hadn't quite panned out like that. Here in Peru it was splayed across my plate, its bedding was fried potatoes rather than sawdust. But I must say that my sympathies receded as I savoured the pleasant, slightly gamey flavour and, with a little effort, the bones were soon picked clean. People have a passionate irrationality when it comes to eating something that could be a pet, witness the western horror for making dogs a dinner. Guinea pigs on plates don't elicit quite the same reaction as that I suppose but what I was doing could still move an 8 year old to tear...
The horizon leans forward...