Eating guinea pigs in the name of science

When I married my archaeologist wife, Nikki, I figured I was signing up for a life of Indiana Jones-type adventures. Those pictures of her hunched in tombs, the stories about unearthing 1,000-year-old skeletons - these relics of her time in the field convinced me that our lives together would be anything but ordinary.

Nothing, however, prepared me for eating a cute and fluffy household pet in the name of science.

The gastronomic escapade occurred in Lima, Peru, where the two of us lived for three months while Nikki researched her doctorate.

Her project was heady stuff. She sampled bones excavated from a coastal fishing town named Ancon. Later, during tests in the United States, she looked at chemical signatures in the bones and determined whether the people composed of those bones hailed from the coast or migrated there.

Guinea pigs were a big part of the analysis. The little rodents, locally called cuy (coo-ee), have been celebrated as a special meal in the Andes for 1,000 years. Today the creatures are considered a delicacy, the Peruvian equivalent of Beluga caviar.

Cuy don't travel much, so Nikki knew that guinea pigs raised at Ancon would provide perfect chemical controls for her research. All she needed were their bones.

In any other society, it might have been easy to buy a few cuy, kill them and pocket the bones. But in Peru, where the little fellows are seen as furry deities, nobody was willing to part with cuy without preparing a feast.

So we scheduled a meal to remember. Nikki found a farmer in Ancon who raised cuy, and ordered three. The farmer agreed to skin the animals and fry them with pepper and achiote, a South American spice.

The morning of the big meal, Nikki woke up sick. After her fourth trip to the bathroom, it was clear she wasn't leaving the apartment. This meant I'd have to go to Ancon, eat all the cuy and fetch the bones alone.

When I arrived at the museum where Nikki was conducting her research, the museum's director, Justo, brimmed with excitement.

"Estas listo para comer cuy?" he asked, asking if I was ready to eat the guinea pigs.

"I think so," I replied in Spanish.

Justo led me into the lab. Normally, this was where Nikki articulated skeletons. Today, the room was set up like a banquet hall, with tablecloths on the tables, candles and bottles of cold Cusqueña beer.

I took a seat across from Benny, the museum secretary, and Azaleah, another researcher. The two of them were grinning like schoolchildren on Halloween.

The farmer entered carrying a Pyrex dish with the guinea pigs nestled side-by-side-by-side. Azaleah gasped. Benny sighed. Justo pursed his lips as if to kiss the air.

"Que ricos!" he said. How rich.

During the next 15 minutes, parts of different guinea pigs found their way to my plate: A leg. An arm. A back.

Timidly, I dug in. The leg and back were gamey but moist. The arm was a bit like the leg of a Dungeness crab - tons of work for little reward. With every bite, I tossed bones from each guinea pig into Ziploc bags.

Conversation was sparse during most of the meal, but when we did talk, subject matter was peculiar at best.

"Do you eat guinea pigs in your country?" Benny asked at one point.

No, I explained, in our country they were pets.

"Mascotas?" she asked, quizzically repeating the Spanish word for pets.

Yes, I said timidly, pets.

"Do you eat cats?" she asked.

No, I said, those are pets, too.

Benny could not believe her ears. As she gnawed at a cuy foot, she explained that if she had a cat for a pet, she probably would eat it, and that if she didn't, someone else likely would.

My appetite had pretty much disappeared after the cat conversation, but apparently, one more ritual remained: the head. Justo explained to me that this was by far the best part of a cuy, and that no guinea pig feast was complete until everyone had tasted it.

In this case, however, numbers were working against us.

Including the farmer and her assistant, there were six people, and only three heads to go around. Because fried guinea pig heads are roughly the size of garlic cloves, they are challenging to split. Obviously, Justo and Azaleah each wanted heads. That left one head for the rest of us.

Benny, it turns out, was not a head gal. The farmer's assistant also bowed out. That meant the fight for the final head was between the farmer and me.

A detente of etiquette set in quickly. Mine was a dilemma of chivalry; there was no way I was going to deprive an elderly woman of anything, especially fried cuy head. The farmer, on the other hand, was trapped by Peruvian hospitality; because I was a guest, there was no way she could take the head out of my mouth.

Back and forth we went : You eat it; no you; I insist you eat the cuy; seriously, it's yours. Finally, Justo ended the discussion by popping the entire head into his mouth. His defense: Cuy head was "too special" to go uneaten for so long.

Later, on the ride home, when I told the taxi driver about the feast, he got so excited he nearly rammed the cab into a parked bus.

"Three cuy! Three!" he exclaimed. "For me, it would have been a fantasy!"

That's when the significance of my day at Ancon finally dawned on me.

Sure, I had told myself I was eating guinea pigs in the name of science. And yes, the bones eventually helped my wife complete her doctorate.

But whatever had led me to Ancon that afternoon, I had partaken in one of the oldest gustatory traditions in Peruvian history. For a traveler, few cultural experiences are more sacred than that, and in my world, the memory will last nearly as long as any chemical signature ever could.