The little guy does not taste like chicken

I found a guinea pig today! It was a rather rewarding hour I had today. First, I headed up a street that I hadn´t before and ran into a lady knitting winter hats. I´ve seen this many times here. They usually offer me their goods and I say, ¨No gracias.¨ This time however, I stopped because there was a striking green hat on the top of her stack. I picked it up and she said, ¨quintente(or however you say/spell 15).¨ I said, ¨No, doce (12).¨ The hat had pink and purple in it, but I was willing to have that in order to have the beautiful green. As I was standing there she took out this wire brush and started stroking the hat. It makes it more fluffy, but I quite prefurred the untouched hat. As I looked down I saw the hat she was working on was the same green yarn, but had blue and black on it. I asked her how long it would take to finish, in my best broken Spanish. She told me 10-15 minutes, so I took a seat next to her and waited. Her hands moved really fast. While she was working, I noticed the other hat had white trim, so I asked if she could do that to mine. When she finished, I asked her not to brush it and gave her 20 soles due to her making the hat to my specifications. It´s still a hand knit hat for $6.



I continued up this small street and only a few yards later I found a restaurant with a chalkboard outside, ¨Guinea Pig¨. I went in, ordered the thing, and waited. About 20 minutes later it came out, the whole thing, split in half.
The skin was like really, really think rubber. I tried to cut it with the provided butter knife, but it didn´t work. The waiter saw my struggle and motioned to me to pick it up and naw with my teeth. So I did. I would never touch dark turkey meat at Thanksgiving with a ten foot pole, but here in Peru I´ll eat guinea pig. It does NOT taste like chicken. I actually can´t tell you what it tastes like. I didn´t much care for the taste and after finding as much meat as my stomach could handle, I was done.














I´m glad I had the experience but won´t need to eat guinea pig again. In this photo you can see my new hat.

Well I´m supposed to be on my way home tomorrow. I have a flight to Lima at 4:30 p.m. When I stopped back at my hostal, the night guard, who speaks less English than I speak Spanish tells me that is a taxi protest tomorrow and that I´ll have to walk to the airport. Of course my stress level hit near breaking point. I went out and tried to find someone who spoke English. I found one guy who told me that if I get up at 5 a.m. I can find one. That would mean I would be at this small airport for nearly 12 hours before my 19 hour travel itinerary. Then I found another guy and his mother. He spoke better English and his mother said the protest is on Wednesday. So, please, lets hope he is correct, or I may have to walk to the airport and there are no maps that I have found yet. I´m planning on offering someone 20 soles(it is usually 5 to the airport) to drive me if possible. My thinking is someone will take me. Let´s hope so, right? I hope to be home in the States on Wednesday morning. Keep your fingers crossed.