Mike Down South

In Ecuador and Peru, you can find “cuy” [“guinea pig”] at certain restaurants that serve traditional Ecuadorean / Peruvian food. I’d found one or two of these restaurants before, but they were always closed when I tried to go. In Cusco, they’re well aware that eating guinea pigs is a tourist curiosity and, like everything else in Cusco they’ve figured out that tourists like, there are 9 billion places to find it.

I ate at a restaurant on my first night in Cusco that served cuy, but I wasn’t quite in the right headspace to eat a guinea pig, so I tried alpaca meat instead (wasn’t a fan). I spent today mentally preparing for a meal of guinea pig (and not achieving much else, come to think of it). By dinnertime, I was ready and I headed to a cuy-serving restaurant I’d passed by during my meanderings about town and ordered “cuy al horno” [“oven roasted guinea pig”].

As you can see, it’s served whole. It still has teeth! It’s pretty creepy to have sitting on your plate staring back at you. The waitress was really excited that I’d ordered it and insisted on taking a picture of my first bite. She instructed me to eat it in local fashion: with my bare hands.

The skin was unexpectedly tough. I thought I’d be able to just bite into it, but I really had to pull at it to tear off a chunk of meat. Once I got past the skin, the meat had the texture and consistency of chicken, but not the taste. The taste was actually very similar to hamster meat.

I gotta say, guinea pig is pretty tasty, though it is uncomfortable to slowly rip off and eat body parts from a whole animal. Especially one that’s kind of cute when it’s alive. As I was eating it, I noticed it actually looked like a rat. Really, they could have easily served me a rat and I’d have no idea but to keep from getting too gross, let’s assume it was guinea pig.

This was the final result. All in all, a very good meal, but not the kind of thing I think I’ll do again anytime soon. It tastes good, but it’s expensive (by Peruvian standards) at around $18, which is double the price of a normal dinner. Also, I promised the demon cuy ghosts that now haunt my hostel room that I’d never do it again.

To make myself look less bloodthirsty, I got a picture of me eating my dessert, a banana-chocolate crêpe, which I had absolutely no qualms about eating whole.

(my apologies to okay for this post / my sins)

I’ve been in Cusco, Peru for about a day now and the main thing I’m excited to do in Cusco is leave Cusco.

To be fair, I disliked Cusco before I even got here. I was talking to a Canadian guy in Lima who told me how convenient it was in Cusco because everyone spoke English to him. That was about the time I suspected Cusco and I probably weren’t going to get along. On top of that, I came to Cusco directly from Lima and that’s a tough act to follow because I loved Lima. As soon as I arrived in Cusco, I could tell it was everything I’d feared by focusing only on the aspects of the city that confirmed my pre-conceived notions about it.

Walking around, I constantly get the sense that Cusco has two kinds of people: tourists and people who are trying to sell to tourists. Every block’s got a travel agency, a “traditional food” restaurant, an internet café, a massage parlor (I think legit?), a Peruvian crafts/art store…

This morning, I saw an 8 year old girl dressed in traditional clothing carrying a baby alpaca under her arm. If you’ve never seen a baby alpaca, they’re outrageously adorable. It’s an alpaca that’s so small that this tiny girl could comfortably carry it in a pouch under her arm! I was SO excited. But then I realized that this whole thing was contrived. She was dressed this way and carrying around the alpaca so she could charge people to take her picture. Totally ruined it for me. I wanted it to be that I was catching this slice of Andean life that’s adorable, but instead I was seeing a caricature of Andean life that’s manufactured for tourists to make a profit.

When I had lunch, the waiter told me midway through the meal that I spoke Spanish very well. I was kind of dubious because I hadn’t said anything very complicated, but he said it with such conviction, I decided to humbly accept the compliment. Then the exact same thing happened when I was eating dinner, except that time I knew that I hadn’t said anything in Spanish aside from my food order and that was dead simple, but I had still managed to screw up the pronunciation. Fake compliments for the gringos! It almost cheapened all the definitely sincere compliments about my Spanish I’d received in Lima from waiters / receptionists / various people I was paying to serve me. Almost.

On top of all that, it’s cold and rainy here and a lot of the stores / restaurants aren’t heated, so you have to be bundled up even inside (including at my hostel). Most of the streets are really narrow, so they feel more like back alleys than roads. The city’s in the middle of the hills, so you’re constantly trudging up and down hills to get around.

So in closing: waaaaah, waaaaah, waaaaah.

I was dutifully doing exercises in my Spanish workbook a few days ago when I came across this “True or False” exercise:

C’mon, Spanish workbook! It’s not like I’ve absorbed all information in the world except Spanish and this is the last thing I have left to learn. I don’t know where the Summer Olympics were held in ‘92 or which team won the ‘99 World Series. Or that ET actually didn’t win Best Picture (it lost to Gandhi, apparently). You definitely wanted me to get that one wrong, Spanish workbook.

Because my name is Mike and I’m American, people in Peru have joked that I’m a character on the Peruvian soap opera, “Al Fondo Hay Sitio” [“There’s Room in the Back”], which features an American character named Mike. It’s apparently one of the most popular shows in Peru. My friend Ingrid was kind enough to send me a link to an episode and, while I don’t understand a lot of the words, I’ll walk you through my understanding of the episode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q88UmLVVoHQ

We open in some sort of convenience store where Mike is talking to these three people. They’re demanding to know how he can be Fernanda’s boyfriend when Fernanda is dating Joel. Mike explains to them that he is indeed Fernanda’s new boyfriend and well – sucks for Joel. He then asks, “Why, do you know Joel?”

“We’re his family!” they tell Mike, furiously. “I’m his grandmother,” says his grandmother. “I’m his sister,” says his sister. “[undecipherable],” says his rabbi (?). They angrily chase Mike out of the store.

If you’re watching along, you’ll notice that Mike looks and talks just like all the other Peruvian characters, though his character is American. You kind of have to suspend disbelief, as Peruvian shows don’t concern themselves with such superficial matters like realistic skin tone or accents. Later in the episode he’s asked his last name. “Miller,” he says. Alright, I guess that’s pretty American. “Miller-Villaviciencio,” he continues. Oh… okay, then.

Joel flees the store and who should be walking by right at that moment? Fernanda! Mike’s dramabomb of a girlfriend. She’s apparently just come from breaking up with her other boyfriend, Joel. She’s shaken up, but Mike consoles her and then they make out.

As it turns out, making out with your new boyfriend directly in front of your ex-boyfriend’s house/convenience store doesn’t afford you the privacy you might expect, as Joel’s whole family sees them!

The woman in the blue dress is later revealed to be Joel’s mother. We don’t ever actually get to see Joel in this clip, but based on his mother’s age, I’m guessing either A) Fernanda was dating a 7 year old boy or B) Joel’s mother gave birth to Joel when she was about 5 years old.

Joel’s family proceeds to loudly discuss the situation despite the fact that they’re standing at an open window 8 feet away from the smooching couple.

Fortunately, Mike and Fernanda have the courtesy to pretend they can’t hear the family’s running commentary, as it would have interrupted the flow of the episode, so they continue making out.

Switching gears, now we’re in a fancy house. These two characters are talking too quickly for me to understand, but they definitely seem like they’re up to something. They’re interrupted when Fernanda and Mike enter and we learn that these two people are Fernanda’s grandmother and her butler. The butler was apparently hired when the family realized they needed someone to raise one eyebrow suspiciously, as this is basically all he does for the remainder of the episode.

Even though this seems to be the first time Mike is meeting anyone in Fernanda’s family, Fernanda’s grandmother proposes that they throw a spontaneous party that night so that Mike can meet all of Fernanda’s family and friends. Mike and Fernanda inexplicably agree to this enthusiastically and Mike scampers off to go change. Once Mike is gone, Fernanda and her grandmother squeal in delight about how awesome Mike is. Just before the show breaks for its first commercial, we close with a shot of the butler, who is, not surprisingly, raising one eyebrow in suspicion.

So, pretty good show so far. Better than the current season of “The Office” at least. I can’t wait to see what the butler and the grandma were scheming about! And I wonder how this party’s going to go over for Mike!

I woke up after my nap Friday afternoon and saw a sign that had been posted on my door that read, “Anything But Clothes Party! January 29th.” I was excited. That was the next day. If there’s one thing I love, it’s parties where I can wear something that makes people wonder whether they’re amused or uncomfortable. This is exactly what I had been trained for.

I didn’t have a lot to work with because I didn’t know the area around my hostel to buy materials within the next day. I figured there was going to be a lot of bedsheet / garbage bag costumes, so I didn’t want to do that. I had a friend who used saran wrap for an ABC party in college. “But isn’t it see-through?” I asked her at the time. “No, if you wrap it enough it becomes opaque.”

The party was just starting to get going and I was in the bathroom, halfway through my single roll of saran wrap, when I realized – no, it does not become opaque. I was wearing mostly-transparent plastic shorts. As much as I like weird costumes, that’d be a bit much. I was trying to figure out a way to somehow salvage this, when I saw the answer right in front of me. Bam! Toilet paper. I mummy wrapped a bunch of toiler paper around myself, then wrapped the saran wrap over that to secure it. It worked! Except now the white color and plastic texture made it look like I was wearing a diaper. I started wrapping toilet paper down my legs to get closer to shorts, but when I finished it looked more like a big pelvic cast. Alright, better than diaper. Let’s go!

Okay, so by the time I thought to go grab my camera, gravity had taken its toll on the costume and I’d lost the legs a bit. As you can see, my prediction of lots of sheet costumes was correct, so when I showed up with my weird saran wrap thing, people were pretty into it.

Not everyone participated in the ABC theme. In fact, almost nobody else did except the 3 people pictured previously and two of the bartenders. So for most of the party, I was walking around in a bar full of ~20-30 normally dressed people while I was wearing just plastic and toilet paper.

As an added bonus, a Peruvian girl I’d met earlier in the week came to the hostel to see me and brought several of her friends. None of them knew there was an ABC party and were understandably confused when they found me hanging out at the bar in saran wrap shorts. I told her that I’d be keeping the outfit on when I went out dancing with her later and she looked horrified. “Por favor. Cambia. [Please. Change.]” she pleaded. (I eventually did change into normal clothes for the club.)