Wander the world with Bill and Cindy

Where in the world ARE Bill and Cindy?

I realized over the past few days and multiple phone calls to you folks back home that people (including our parents) are a wee bit confused as to where in the world ARE Cindy and Bill.   I’ll take the blame here.  I normally keep the blog up-to-date with our latest and greatest adventures, but over the past month or so have slowly fallen behind.  I have a long list of experiences from our travels that I would like to share, but then everyone thinks we are in Morocco or Budapest when we’ve already jetted off to South America.

So, as of today I’m putting our “catch-up” blogs on hold, and you all will just have to wait for our crazy stories of three overnight buses in Turkey in 5 days, our 10 hour whirlwind bonus tour of Budapest, and our roaming the streets of Paris eating (and eating and eating) and recovering from said three overnight bus trips and whirlwind Budapest tour.

Which brings us to South America.   We are slowing down again (thank goodness) and spending a glorious month in Cusco, Peru.   Our first week here has been quite a brain-breaker with four hours of Spanish lessons per day.  And no, it’s not a visa requirement, we are subjecting ourselves to this intentionally.

Cuy fresh from the wood-fired oven

We are off to spend four days huffing and puffing our way over the Inca trail on our way to Machu Picchu.  But in the meantime I’ll share just a quick story of our most adventurous day in Cusco so far – our cuy pilgrimage.

You are probably thinking – What the he*& is cuy?  And I am here to enlighten you – cuy is guinea pig.  It is a favorite dish of almost any Peruvian that you talk to – each one exclaims “Muy rico!” (Very rich!) when you mention the word cuy.  Our Spanish teachers insisted that we make the trek to the local town of Tipon – the cuy capital of the area.  As a side note, there’s also some amazing Inca ruins in Tipon, but they pale in comparison to our memories of cuy.

We took our taxi cab driver’s recommendation and went to his favorite cuyeria (yes, that is really what they are called!)  Not wanting to commit to a whole little guy each, Bill, myself and our friends Steve and Kelly decided to split two cuy.   I’m not sure what would have been worse, having the entire critter on my plate or seeing the woman hack them in half with a cleaver.  The boys dug in without hesitation, picking

Bill digging into his cuy!

up the little guys with their feet still attached and gnawing the meat off the bone.  I could do little more than pick at mine, although I have to admit the meat flavor really was pretty good.

The cuy even came served with the heads as a little surprise.  When you picked up the body there was the head, teeth and all, staring at you from the plate.   As open-minded a traveler and eater as I thought I was, this was one daunting meal.

So with that visual for the day, we are heading off on the same route the ancient Incas took to get to Machu Picchu.  The blog will be silent for a week or so, but we should have lots of

Steve with his cuy head

great stories and pictures when we return from our trek.  Personally, I’m just saying a little prayer that they don’t serve us cuy on the trail.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.