The Colombian Hat Dance

There is only one non-stop flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Bogotá, Colombia. For reasons known only to American Airlines, the flight arrives in South America at one o’clock in the morning, just in time for everything to shut down.

I’m already convinced that landing in Colombia with my hipster hat, earring and beard that I have DRUG MULE written all over me. Now they have me arriving on a flight when even the coke dealers are headed for bed.

“Hola!” I greet one of the sleep-deprived cab drivers outside of the baggage claim. “Como está esta noche?”  The driver nods politely but I see from the look on his face that’s he’s sized me up as way more cheerful than any normal person should be at 1:30 in the morning. Unless they’re on drugs.

The driver loads my bag in the trunk and asks where we’re going. I have specifically booked a hotel near the airport because I knew at this hour I wouldn’t be up for a 45-minute taxi ride into the city. I tell him the name of the hotel.

He’s never heard of it. Address? 

I locate a printout in my bag and give him the address.

He puts the car and gear and starts driving, but I can tell that he has no idea where we’re going. We turn from the main airport road on to a deserted side street. At 1:30 in the morning it looks like it would be a good place to dump the bodies. No one is on the sidewalks; no other car is in sight.

The cabby drives slowly, looking at street numbers. Eventually we stop at a corner and the driver points to a small building with a tiny lit sign above the doorway.

Is that it? I ask in Spanish. I don’t think that’s it.

The driver is also incredulous.

“Esta es la dirécción, pero … es feo!”

My Spanish is not great but I’m pretty sure the driver just called my hotel ugly.

As the cab creeps closer I see the tiny sign above the door: Hotel Aces Del Dorado. A tiny woman cracks open the door and eyes us suspiciously.

That must be the bellhop, I tell the driver.  This gets no laugh, but, you know, it’s getting early.

*          *          *

As anyone who has been to Colombia lately will tell you, the country gets a bum rap due to its long-standing bad rep. Yes, Colombia was more or less synonymous with cocaine, cartels, and drug-related violence throughout the 80s and well into the 90s. The government’s battle against the FARC and ELN guerilla movements has lasted five decades. In the mid 90s, Bogotá was undisputedly one of the most dangerous cities in the world, with 4,325 murdered in the city in 1993 alone.  Medellin – home to the world-infamous Medellin Drug Cartel – was even worse.

This is not exactly the information you want printed up in your tourism brochures.

But I had read enough before coming here to know that a lot has changed in Colombia in the past twenty years, and I know from experience that reputation and reality quite often are not the same.  Today the guerilla wars are more or less over, unless you wander into a remote jungle where you really shouldn’t be wandering. And the Colombian cartels are just not what they used to be. By 2007, the murder rate in Bogotá had dropped by more than 75 percent, and by 2014 in Medellin the rate was its lowest in decades.

I didn’t think this would be like a trip to Disneyland. But if you are over the age of 10, who really wants to go to Disneyland? All that walking. I’d much rather go to Colombia, where I can invent my own version of the Disneyland death march.

*          *          *

The Hotel Aces Del Dorado is located almost within walking distance of the El Dorado International Airport, in a neighborhood I would charitably describe as “working class.” It is also unfortunately located next to the airport’s runways, that seem to be working 24 hours a day.

So I don’t sleep during what’s left of my first morning in Colombia, as much as I lie awake on the bed in a puddle of sweat, listening to airplanes. The hotel is clean but short on amenities. For example, the air conditioning system doesn’t seem to involve the actual cooling of air. The bathroom sink includes a single faucet, cold water only. Wi-fi exists in theory, but not actual practice.

The hotel is staffed by a family of tiny, unsmiling women, ranging in age from 16 to 86. Around 9:30 a.m. I emerge from my room and walk down to the small lobby. When I ask a sullen 16-year-old girl reading a magazine behind the desk if breakfast is available, she turns and looks at the clock.

Breakfast ends at 9:00, she tells me.

Someone yells something in Spanish from the back room. It’s grandma. From her tone I gather she’s telling the teenager to get off her ass and make me some breakfast. It’s not like she’s busy with other customers.

The girl gets up with a sigh and an eye roll and disappears in the back. I take a seat at one of the two laminated tables, still half-asleep. After a while Abuelita emerges carrying a plate with a small plain omelet, with a couple of slices of cheese on the side.  What I really need is some coffee, which I ask for as I reach for the shaker to put salt on my eggs.

The old woman actually shrieks.

“Aye! No es sel! Es azúcar!”

Just another crazy Gringo, scaring the elderly by trying to put sugar on his omelet. I’m too tired to pretend that I did it on purpose.

 “GRACIAS!” I say to grandma, raising my voice to be heard over a plane roaring down the runway outside.  The girl is staring at me from her place behind the front counter, like I’m an exotic species in the reptile house. Maybe she’s mesmerized by my hat.

I smile and thank the girl for making me breakfast. She doesn’t smile back.

*          *          *

Bogotá is the third largest city in the Western Hemisphere (after New York and Mexico City) with an area population of more than 13 million, but has no subway or metro system. “Sprawling” and “traffic choked” don’t do it justice. It’s as if Los Angeles and New Delhi had sex, gave birth to a South American city, and named it Bogotá.

To travel from my new hotel (hot water in the sink and nowhere near a runway. Score!) in the neighborhood of Usaquén to the historic center, there is essentially one north-south route, Avenue Alberto Lleras Camargo, running along the foothills of the Cordillera Mountains. This “main artery” consists of an endless parade of honking cars and buses, sporadically moving forward at two miles an hour.

I see no point to paying for a taxi and sitting in traffic, so I opt for the less comfortable but cheaper option of taking a bus and sitting in traffic. Still, this is not as easy as it sounds. In Bogotá there are dozens of privately operated bus companies trawling the streets, with their ultimate destinations (sometimes) written in placards next to the drivers’ windshield.

These placards might be difficult to read if the bus was moving at a normal speed, but at midday on Avenue Alberto Lleras Camargo that doesn’t present a problem. I wait on the side of the road looking for a bus with a sign that says “El Centro.” Twenty buses creep by. Nothing says “El Centro.”

But hey, they’re all headed in the same direction, down the same road. They all have to go to the Center, right? Or at least toward it. That’s enough of a rationalization to get me off the street and out of the sun. I wave down the next bus that lumbers toward me, hand over 2,000 pesos (about 80 cents), and join the slow parade into the city.

*          *          *

There may be other tourists somewhere in Bogotá, but if there are, I haven’t seen them.  On the steps outside the Fernando Botero museum, I am approached by a group of uniformed schoolgirls and handed a questionnaire.  It’s a class project, they explain in English. They have to find foreigners, and ask them questions about Colombian fruit.

Sadly, I score very poorly on the fruit quiz.  I ask them how many other foreigners they’ve found. A girl answers by holding out only two or three completed survey forms. I wonder how long it took to get those.

*          *          *

Tourists seem equally scarce in Botero’s hometown of Medellin. I suspect the Medellin Chamber of Commerce might need another slogan other than “Former Cocaine Capital of the World!”

The reputation hangover from the Drug Wars is a shame, because Medellin is actually a beautiful city, lining the Medellin River and nestled in a valley between a ring of tree-covered mountains.  Unlike Bogotá – or any other place in Colombia – Medellin has a clean and modern metro system that includes the gondola cable cars that climb far into the hills. Giant billboards in the business district are adorned with attractive models in expensive-looking underwear – always a sign that times must be pretty good.

I rent a two-bedroom, two-bath suite in the Medellin neighborhood of La Floresta with a view over the hills for equivalent of $50 a night. The people at the hotel are so friendly and happy to see a customer that, upon checkout, the hotel manager offers to personally drive me 45 minutes to the airport.

On a warm evening I walk alone through Medellin’s Zona Rosa district. I suspect things might get hopping later, but at 8:00 p.m. the bars and restaurants are nearly deserted.

I choose a bar with outdoor patio and order a beer and a plate of Bistec a Caballo (steak with a fried egg and plantain. Big thumbs up). Aside from the waitress and me the only people in the bar are two men talking in low tones at a nearby table. After a few minutes one of the men approaches and asks in English where I’m from. When I tell him, the man claps his hands and gleefully shouts back at his companion.

“See? I told you, I told you!” 

The man’s name is Javier, and he’s the bar owner. Javier just bet his companion Kenneth, a Canadian from Calgary, now living in Medellin, that I was American.  Kenneth didn’t think so. Because of the hat.

“You don’t often see Americans wear a hat like that,” Kenneth tells me.

Frankly I don’t think Kenneth from Calgary really knows what Americans are wearing these days, but I do my best to take it as a compliment.

*          *          *

I finally find the Americans and other foreign tourists in droves on the Caribbean coast in Cartagena, where the sun is hot and the humidity is soul crushing.  

Make no mistake: the old city of Cartagena does have its charms. It’s filled with vibrantly painted colonial buildings, with crumbling stone balconies covered by dangling vines and shockingly pink bougainvillea flowers.  In the middle of the day people move slowly and cluster on one side of the street, instinctively seeking out any available shade. At night salsa music spills out of doorways, and sidewalk cafes cool off the customers with mojitos, Cuba Libres, and ice-cold Colombian beer.

I imagine this is what Havana will be like, when it is once again frequented by sunburned Americans in cargo shorts and Old Navy T-shirts.

But in the tourists’ wake comes the unavoidable flotsam and jetsam of Capitalism: trinket sellers, beggars, street singers, guitar players, restaurant hawkers, strip-bar solicitors, pre-pubescent pickpockets and third-rate con artists.  As a foreigner walking through the Old City I might as well have a dollar bill tattooed on my forehead. Everybody is selling something, and I am accosted on every corner.

Trying to sit Cartagena’s Plaza Santa Domingo and drink a beer is like being a naked fat guy sealed in an aquarium filled with hungry mosquitos.  In this particular analogy, I am the naked fat guy; the trinket sellers are the mosquitos. I desperately try to swat them away, but it’s only a matter of time before I’m eaten alive.

Returning to the hotel a skinny man wearing a fedora and two-toned loafers steps in front of me on the sidewalk. He smiles and wags his finger.

“I know you,” he says perfect English.

“I don’t think so,” I respond, stepping aside.

“I do, I do,” he says, grinning and shaking his head. “I’ve got everything.” He leans toward me, confidentially. “Everything.”

So far in Colombia I learned that I don’t look American, but I do look a guy ready to buy “everything.” The price I pay, apparently, for the long hair, earring, and of course the hat.

*          *          *

After the sun sets on Cartagena I head off in the direction away from the Hard Rock Café and the Ferragamo shoe store. Bypassing the places clogged with tourists, I come across the KGB Bar, an over-the-top ketch factory complete with hammer-and-sickle Soviet flags, female mannequins dressed in Red Army uniforms, looping videos of Kremlin military parades, and Colombian waitresses with Barbie-doll dimensions, dressed in short shorts, tight T shirts, and Russian fur hats.

The bar is completely empty. Everything about the KGB Bar is out of place and inappropriate for the old city of Cartagena, almost as if it was specifically designed to drive away Americans.

I love it.

After a while a couple of sunburned guys speaking Russian tentatively step into the bar and check out the décor. They point at the walls and solemnly nod at each other, as if to say yes, they really have captured the flavor of Old Leningrad here, haven’t they? They walk out without ordering a drink.

As I’m finishing my beer a man and woman in their 60s come through the door. The couple’s appearance screams HI! WE’RE FROM MINNESOTA, OR SOMEWHERE AROUND THERE, YOU KNOW!!, pretty much as mine screams DRUG MULE. They order two light beers, and are outraged when the bartender tells them that they can’t use American money to pay for the drinks.

 “But they told us we can use American dollars!” the man protests.  

I don’t know who “they” are, but, um, we are in Colombia. And this is called the KGB Bar. Rubles maybe, but American dollars?

The bartender shrugs, and the disillusioned Minnesotans turn and leave still holding their dollars, walking in the direction of the Hard Rock Café.

*          *          *         

Back in Bogotá I’ve been walking all day and I’m starting to fade, as both dusk and Friday night rush-hour traffic settles in.  It’s almost dark when I reach Avenue Alberto Lleras Camargo, a few miles south of my hotel. I could wave down a cab, but hey, no need for that. I figured this out the first time around: Buses run north and south, and the cross streets are numbered. Hop on the bus, pay your 2,000 pesos, sit in traffic, hop off the bus.  So easy, it’s almost idiot-proof.

I did say almost.

The bus I wave down does in fact go north toward Usaquén, for a while. But then I notice something strange. The bus seems to be going up, while the lights of the city, conversely, seem to be going down. 

This is because I am no longer headed toward my hotel in Usaquén but instead up into the Cordillera Mountains above Bogotá, headed for God knows where. The bus passes a roadside restaurant and then climbs past all signs of human activity, into the darkened, tree-covered hills.

At this point, I see two choices. I could sit tight, not panic, and wait until I reach a destination with some kind of civilization, where I can figure out how to get another bus or taxi back into town. The people on the bus have to be going somewhere, right? The problem, I realize, is that I have no idea how far that somewhere might be. This might be the bus headed to a suburb 20 miles out of town. For all I know I’m on the bus to Venezuela.

The other choice I see is to pull the chord and bail as soon as possible, before I get any farther from the city.  The problem with this option is that the bus now appears to be in the middle of nowhere, a dark road on a Friday night on the side of a mountain somewhere above Bogotá.    

Not real happy with my choices here, I have to tell you. I take a deep breath and pull the chord.

*          *          *

There is one (and I can only think of one) advantage to being lost in the dark on the side of a mountain in Colombia: at least you know that the correct direction to walk is down. I start walking.

I have no idea how far I am from the city. I can see the lights of Bogotá below me, but whether it’s two miles or ten is hard to guess.  Occasionally I’m illuminated by the headlights of a car or bus driving up the hillside. I don’t notice much driving back the other way.

I walk in the dark along the right side of the road, when there is a side of the road to walk on. Occasionally the side of the road disappears, replaced by a guardrail overlooking a precipitous drop down the hillside.

In the daytime that must be pretty scary.

After about ten minutes I hear muffled voices down the road ahead of me. I think the voices are headed toward me, but this makes no sense. Who is stupid or crazy enough to walking up a mountain in the pitch dark? I have my answer as the voices get close enough for me to see the silhouetted outline of rounded helmets on the figures approaching me. Rounded helmets, and drawn rifles.

I can’t decide whether I should feel safer because there is an army patrol walking at night past me on the side of a mountain in Colombia, or whether I should be concerned that someone in a position of power decided that, for whatever reason, the road where I’m walking in the dark needed to be patrolled by the army.

I move to the other side of the road to let the soldiers pass. They walk on as if I’m invisible, which in the dark, I possibly could be. If I look like a FARC guerilla, or a lost American tourist in a hipster hat, no one seems to care either way.

*          *          *

I finally reach the restaurant mentally noted as The Last Sign of Civilization on my bus ride up the hill. The restaurant is perched on the side of a cliff overlooking the lights of the city, and looks like the kind of place to which people will make a special trip to propose marriage or impress an out-of-town client.

I’m not really in a position to do either. But I figure I will eat a nice meal, have the restaurant call a cab, take a relaxing ride back to the hotel, and put an uneventful end to my night on the mountain. Our crops are saved.

Or so I think. But I’m still in Colombia, and I still have more hell to pay for being an idiot.

I’m tired and hungry, and I wait an excruciating amount of time for actual food to arrive. In order to placate me in the interim, the waiter brings me (as an appetizer? an amuse bouche?) a plate of unsalted popcorn. Not a bowl, but a plate, as if I’m being served an exotic delicacy.

It’s been that kind of night.  I drink my wine, munch my popcorn, and look at the lights of Bogotá, holding vigil for my overpriced meal.

After I finally eat and pay the check, my request to the man behind the restaurant’s bar – and the Spanish necessary to make it – seems simple enough: Please call me a cab to take me back to the city. The bartender looks at me, as if am a FARC guerilla or a lost American tourist in a hipster hat. 

A cab to the city?

Yeah, you know. Down the hill.

Apparently a majority of the clientele here drive their own cars to the restaurant, and when they leave, they drive their own cars home. They don’t get dropped off by a bus, eat a plate of popcorn, and then request a cab to go back to Bogotá. But as if to humor me, the bartender picks up the phone with a this-is-crazy-but-hey-let’s-give-it-a-shot shrug of his shoulders, and punches in a number.

The bartender keeps the phone to his ear for a minute or two while he goes about his bartending. After a while I watch him hang up, and dial again. Maybe it’s another number, maybe it’s the same one. Either way, no one seems to be answering. He looks at me and shrugs.

Is a cab coming?

No, it’s not coming.

“¿Que? Por qué no?”

The bartender explains. It’s a long explanation, all in Spanish of course. From what little I can discern, it’s something about it being a busy Friday night, and cab drivers’ reluctance to drive up into the hills when they can make more money while not having to drive up into the hills. Still doesn’t explain why they don’t answer the phone.

“No entiendo.”

The bartender looks at me and shrugs again. The man is full of shrugs.

So. It looks like I’m walking home. I’m tired, my feet hurt, it’s still dark, and I’m still on a mountain. But at least I’m full of popcorn.

*          *          *

It probably takes me another thirty minutes or so to walk the rest of the way down the hillside into Bogotá.  Around the halfway point I discover a concrete staircase, and decide to take it. It’s after 11:00 p.m. now, and I encounter no one. What idiot would be out climbing steps at 11 o’clock on a Friday night?

I mean besides me.

Eventually the steps end and I reach Avenue Alberto Lleras Camargo, the main artery back to Usaquén. It’s so late that the traffic is actually moving.

I’m guessing it’s still another 45 minutes to an hour walk back to the hotel. I search in vain for a taxi. Maybe every cab driver in Bogotá is taking the night off, or maybe headed to the airport to see if anyone’s on the 1 a.m. flight from Dallas. I do see several buses drive by, but I am far past the point of chancing another wayward bus, and another drive back up into the hills.

So I walk. And walk some more.

It’s close to midnight by the time I reach my hotel in Usaquén. I have been walking for so long that my blisters have blisters. I limp and drag my feet over uneven pavement and up steps of the hotel. The look on the night clerk’s face tells me he can’t decide whether I’m a garden-variety stumbling drunk, or the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. The look on my face tells him that it’s been that kind of night.

Colombia really is not what you think. Forget about guerillas, death squads and narco-terrorists. But watch out for those self-inflicted Bataan Death Marches down the side of mountains in the dark because you blindly jump on a bus that looks like it should be going in the right direction.

A good hat might let you fool dim-witted Canadians and get past army patrols. But it just can’t fix stupid.

You Don't Have to Eat Cuy, Roy

The taxi driver and I have been speaking – yes, all in Spanish, thanks - for the past forty five minutes as we drive into Quito. Alright, he’s been speaking. I’ve been throwing out responses like “Si,” and “No,” and “Claro!” and “Verdad?,” because to do more would be pushing the boundaries of my linguistic skills. We’ve talked about the new airport (yes, it’s really far from town), baseball (apparently they do play baseball in Ecuador), traffic (yes, lots of traffic), and have now moved on to food.

Every taxi driver in South America, I continue to discover, is an expert on food.

“Have you had the cuy?” my driver asks me.

I’ve only been in the country for a little over an hour, so unless he’s referring to something you pick up at the airport baggage claim men’s room, I suspect the answer here would be no. We are still talking about food, right?

“What’s cuy?” I ask him. “Is that some kind of fish?”

I don’t think that’s such a bad guess. You know, like a cuy pond. Oh, that’s a koi pond? So never tmind.

He laughs. “You don’t know about cuy?”

Yes, I feel stupid, but again: in the country all of one hour. We probably should go back to baseball. “A vegetable?”

This guy thinks I’m hilarious. He declines to explain further, but gives me the name of a restaurant near my hotel in the Mariscal section of Quito, where – the driver says – I’ll be fine if I avoid the drug dealers. Make sure you go to this restaurant, he tells me, and ask for the cuy.

“But not the vegetable cuy,” he says. And he laughs and laughs and laughs.

*          *          *         

There are women in my life of a certain predilection - and they know who they are -  who worship Anthony Bourdain. Many possible reasons (the New York swagger, the 6 ft., 4 in. frame, the distinguished grey) I’m sure, but I suspect it really boils down to one thing: Anthony Bourdain has the cajones to walk into any food shack in any unpronounceable, back-water village in the world and eat absolutely anything.

 

Brains, entrails, organ meat, horse heads cooked in dirt, fried testicles, sautéed esophagus … if you can dream it up, cook it (or not), and throw it on a plate (or not) he will eat it. He is the Super Hero of the Foodie Generation: the good-looking rebel who plays by his own rules, travels the world, hosts his own TV show, eats donkey eyeballs, and his spare time whips up a mean cheese soufflé. 

Of course I suspect Anthony Bourdain also spends a lot of time throwing up off camera. But give the man his due: he has constructed a larger-than-life persona around the courage to gamely sample the world’s most repulsive cuisines. The girls just eat it up. So to speak.  

I can’t hope to compete with Mr. Bourdain in the Bizarre Food/Iron Stomach Competition, but I do try to eat like the locals whenever possible. In fact my final meal in Medellin, Colombia before arriving in Ecuador was mondongo, a thick, stew-like dish of which the main ingredient (or at least the only one I’m cursed to remember) is diced tripe. 

 Try ordering that at your neighborhood Applebee’s.

So whatever cuy is, I’m sure I’ll eventually get around to trying it at some point during my stay in Ecuador. I mean, come on. You’re talking to a man who ate haggis in Scotland, and only hours before polished off a steaming bowl of chopped pig intestine soup. If in Ecuador what they eat is cuy, I will eat cuy.

It’s what Anthony would do.

*          *          *

When I get to my hotel room and connect to the Internet, I Google cuy.

Oh. I see.

So this is why no one in America has dared to open an Ecuadoran restaurant at the mall food court.

At least not near the pet store.

*          *          *

Cuy, or Guinea Pig, as it’s known where I come from, shows up on the menu for the first time the next evening, at La Petit Mariscal, a Belgian/Ecuadoran restaurant (no, that is not a typo: a Belgian– slash – Ecuadoran restaurant) recommended by my hotel desk clerk. The clerk’s attitude while sending me on a ten-minute walk through the Zona Rosa after dark could best be described as “casually concerned.” Like the taxi driver, he cautions me about drug dealers on the street corners.

“Eight, nine o’clock, you should be okay,” he tells me. “No problem.”

“What about ten o’clock?”

He pauses and looks briefly at the ceiling. “Probably okay.”

“Probably?”

“Just watch out for the …”

“… drug dealers on the corner. Like you said. After ten. Got it.”

The drug dealers in Mariscal are pretty easy to spot, positioned about every other block or so like personal greeters at the door of the neighborhood Wal-Mart. Except that they are considerably younger than the greeters at Walmart. And they don’t smile, or greet you. And you know, they’re selling drugs.

Yet walking down unfamiliar South American streets in the non-family friendly side of the city, I don’t feel particularly uncomfortable. There are plenty of people on the sidewalk as an early crowd lingers outside of bass-thumping discos and sad little karaoke bars, and the cops in the center of Foch Square more or less outnumber the drug dealers. Besides, I decide that I really don’t have anything to fear from the boys on the corner. These are not the guys who are going to mug me; they have business to do, and if I’m not buying, they’d just assume I have a nice night and be on my way. God bless Entrepreneurial Capitalism!

As far as I’m concerned, the Special of the Day printed on the restaurant menu is a lot more frightening than anything out on the sidewalk.

GUINEA PIG ROLL/ENROLLADA DE CUY

We serve it without the bones; stuffed with vegetables and a sauce made from the cuy itself

There it is: Guinea Pig Roll. Like a South American version of the Taco Bell Burrito Supreme. Guinea Pigs in a Blanket. With Guinea Pig Sauce!

I send a text to P. to inform her of what’s on the menu in Ecuador, expecting some solidarity in my hesitancy to eat the family pet for dinner.

“Order it!” she responds emphatically. “I would!”

I look at the text and then back at the menu.

“Really?” I text. “Doesn’t this come dangerously close to eating a rat?”

“Don’t be afraid,” is the text that comes back, but I can feel the subtext hanging in the air a continent away: “Don’t be afraid. You wuss.” I know when my manhood is being challenged.

Damn you, Anthony Bourdain.

Guinea Pig. Guinea Pig Roll. I’m wondering if this is served with a side of wood chips.

The waiter is now hovering over me, order pad in hand.

“Do you know what you would like, señor?”

I let out a heavy exhale as I hand him back the menu. I notice my palms are sweaty.

“I’ll have the chicken.”

“Very good, señor. The chicken.”

The chicken, his expression tells me. For the chicken.

*          *          *

The next day I get a Facebook text message from the Ex, currently located in Abu Dhabi. She tells me she’s headed out to the desert soon, to ride camels. My God, life is strange.

“How’s the South America trip going?”

“Fine,” I text back. “Hey let me ask you a question. Do you know what cuy is?”

“No. Do you?”

“I do after Googling it. It’s Guinea Pig.”

“Ah.”

“The question is, would you eat it?”

She tells me a man at a cookout in Queens once offered her a Guinea Pig on a stick.

“It wasn’t done yet,” she writes, “or I would have tried some.”

Come on. Really?

“But isn’t this like eating cat? Or rat?”

“Oh, I would try it. It’s not like eating a rat. More like a bunny.”

Apparently I am surrounded by indiscriminate, flesh-eating carnivore women. What does this say about me?

“I’ll eat anything,” she continues. “Except maybe brains. But then someone told me they were really good, so …”

“Really?” I’m incredulous. “Cat? Dog?”

“You know, if it’s on the menu … I might try it.  I ate horse. I ate a rabbit. These are all friendly creatures. Does that make me a terrible person?”

I’m about to respond that, yes, that does kind of make you a terrible person, but then I stop and think. I also have eaten horse and rabbit, which, I have to admit, probably qualify as pets as much as a Guinea Pig does. In fact, I now remember the Ex herself once had a pet rabbit. I even remember the damn thing’s name.

And yes, I’m sure there’s some kid out on a farm somewhere that has a pet chicken.

“Okay,” I type. “That actually kind of helps, thanks. Enjoy your camel ride.”

*          *          *

By the time I get to Cuenca I am resolved to dive in for the complete Guinea Pig Experience. None of this sissified, Belgian-influenced, de-boned, cuy burrito crap. If I’m eating cuy, I’m eating it like the Ecuadorans do: rotisserie fried until that little sucker is cooked to a crisp.

I Google “Best Place to Eat Cuy in Cuenca.” The number one hit is a block and a half from my hotel. I’m going in. And I haven’t even had a drink yet.

The logo on the sign outside of Guajibamba tells me all I need to know: a smiling cook in a monogrammed apron and Chef Boyardee hat, proudly holding a Guinea Pig impaled on a stick. Pretty sure I’ve got the right place.

Like much of South America, dinner in Ecuador before nine o’clock is like going to the Early Bird Special at Denny’s; you only go if you’re over 65 or really, really hungry.  At 8:00 p.m. the only others in Guajibamba are a scattering of tourists and a couple of Ecuadorans, obviously having a late lunch. But the last thing I’m looking to be is fashionable.

When I inform the waitress that I want to try the cuy, she tells me three things. First, the only way to “try” the cuy is to order it whole. This isn’t Boston Market, where you can get half a chicken and a side of cole slaw. The whole cuy at Guajibamba cost $21, twice as much as anything else on the menu. Fine; bring it on.

Next, she tells me, the cuy takes an hour to prepare. Not a problem, I answer. The last thing I want is undercooked cuy.

Finally, she tells me (I swear), that before I place the order, she’s going need my name, hotel, and passport number.  I don’t have my passport, I tell her. She shrugs. Just your name and where you’re staying then.

My Spanish isn’t good enough to ask why this information is required. Are they worried that I’m going to chicken out during the hour-long preparation time and walk the check? Or is it because in case of a medical emergency involving cuy, the restaurant by law needs to notify someone at the U.S. embassy?

Some things are better left unasked.

*          *          *         

The hour-long Countdown to Cuy has begun. To pass the time I have been given a bowl of salted corn nuts, and steaming teapot of canelazo. The canelazo is

a hot mixture of sugar, water, lemon, and zhumir – the rum-like, national liquor of Ecuador that comes in at 80 proof.  It takes all of about forty-five seconds for the buzz to hit me.

It’s good. Really good. I suspect it would be really, really good if you were delirious and in bed with the flu.

I sip my canelazo, munch a corn nut, and check my watch. Thirty five minutes until the rat arrives. I feel a death-row inmate, waiting for my execution at midnight.

I text P. a status report.

“Almost cuy time.”

“Aren’t you excited? Send me a pic as soon as it arrives!”

I think about the question.

“I am excited,” I text. “I also feel like a contestant on Fear Factor.”

The waitress comes by to ask me if I’d like any more corn nuts. Didn’t Mom always used to say, don’t fill up on corn nuts; you won’t have any room left for Guinea Pig?

No, I’m pretty sure she never formed that particular sentence.

Wow, the zhumir is really kicking in.

“No, gracias, pero un poco mas de canelazo, por favor.”

She nods and yells back to the kitchen, something that I suspect roughly translates as “Drunk Gringo at Table Six!”

Canelazo-fueled courage. Maybe this is how Anthony does it.

*          *          *

As promised, after an hour the cuy arrives at the table, accompanied by a side of potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and a bowl of mote (white hominy). But am I really paying attention to potatoes? I’ve seen potatoes. No. I’m pretty much riveted by the Guinea Pig, literally standing on the plate in front of me. It is whole, roasted, and poised with tiny claws on all fours, like a sprinter in the starting blocks of a track and field event.

And there you have it: Cuy.

But not the vegetable cuy.

The waitress stands by proudly, saying she wanted to show it to me before they cut it up. “Por supuesto,” I say. Of course! How else would one serve a Guinea Pig? I snap a picture and text it to P. Her response comes in five seconds.

“No!!!!!”

“Oh, yes,” I reply. “Pictures don’t lie.”

“Oh … my … God!”

The waitress has taken my main course back to kitchen. I can hear the echo from the butcher block as they complete the non-ceremonial Chopping of the Guinea Pig.  The animal comes back to my table in fifths: right rear, left rear, right front, left front, and head.

Of course you get the head. What, you think that goes in the trash?

With a smile and a “buon provecho,” the waitress leaves me to wrestle with my fried ratty. I pick up one of the hind quarters, and take a bite. Tastes just like chicken, right? Doesn’t every strange food we’ve never had before taste “just like chicken?”

Cuy doesn’t taste just like chicken. I’m not sure it tastes just quite like anything I’ve ever eaten before. The skin is fried crunchy and salty, putting it somewhere in the pork rind family of food products. Once past the crunchy skin, I have to work to get at the meat. The bones are small. I try not to look at the tiny claws.

My phone vibrates with a text from P.  I put down my rat leg.

 “I can’t stop laughing. How is it?”

“It’s difficult to eat, to get at the meat.”

“Is it awful?”

I answer honestly. “When you get it, it’s actually pretty tasty.”

“Get in there! You know I’d be picking it up!”

Way ahead of you, sweetheart.

I work my way through the two hind quarters and tackle the front. There are some pungent internal organs (what, you think they took those out?) that are a little organ meat-y for my taste, but I eat that, too.

I’m almost through the entire body, and I am stuffed full of Guinea Pig. I may never be Anthony Bourdain, but I’m pretty proud of myself, and, a little drunk. I look at the final piece on the platter in front of me.  I put down a claw and text P.

“It’s not bad,” I report. “But I’m sorry. I’m not eating the head.”

She can’t believe it.

“That’s going to be the best part!!

At least try an ear.”

I’m not nearly drunk enough to nibble on a Guinea Pig ear. But I can’t help but smile, and type out another text.

“This would be a lot more fun if you were here, you know.”

“Of course it would.”

I can’t eat another bite. But I consider asking if they possibly serve canelazo for dessert.

“Someday,” I type out as the waitress clears my plate, “We’ll come to Ecuador together. And we’ll share a rat.”

“I can hardly wait.”