It sounded good to a lady on our tour: suckling pig. Perhaps the Segovia style with onions, potatoes (3,000 varieties in Peru!), carrots, white wine. Or maybe the Hawaiian version with banana leaves and all the fixings.

So she ordered it and waited for tender pork to spill onto her plate.

Imagine her surprise when a very small pig showed up whole perched over a layer of potatoes (3,000 varieties!). And what is this? she asked.

“Cuy,” the waiter said. “Guinea pig.”

Quite a surprise, but the woman ate it and found it satisfying. “Like white meat on chicken.”

I thought it tasted and looked more like dark meat, like the thigh of a chicken. We had our adventure with cuy the first night we were in Cuzco when we had dinner with a former colleague and her husband. We had found out through Facebook that they would be in Cuzco when we were there. This is the second time we have met Carol unexpectedly while traveling; the first one was in Avignon in France in 1982.

Carol and Kathy had alpaca steak, and the men decided to split a guinea pig. There is not much meat to pig out on, but we ate it down to its rib cage and left the head untouched.

Guinea pigs are raised like chickens by many families in the Andean highlands, our guide said.

An adventure in eating, but we are still no threat to those in the USSA who keep guinea pigs as pets.