Is this picture worth 30 soles?

There were two Peruvian dishes I really wanted to try. Alpaca, I managed to have on the second day of our trip in Puno. It was wonderfully juicy, but that first meal of alpaca was never equalled. Every other restaurant cooked it like pork, and then, it turned out to be dry and rubbery. So, don't blame me if you go to Peru and decide you don't really care for Alpaca -- you have to be lucky to find a restaurant that cooks it well.

The second dish I wanted to try was "cuy", guinea pig. After a long search, over many days, we finally found a restaurant that did have it on their menu, but we'd gone there for lunch and they said that they'd serve it only for dinner.

After negotiating with the chief cook in the kitchen (she spoke no English, and we spoke no Spanish, so the negotiation was interesting), she agreed to cook us guinea pig if we'd buy the whole animal. Deal!

I asked the cook to pose with the pig, and he was very, very happy to do so. The whole animal turned out to cost 30 soles (about 10 US dollars), but there was little meat on it, so what I really got out of that whole episode was a nice photograph and a good story.