Would you eat a guinea pig? Our writer did - here's the verdict

If I were planning my last supper, I probably wouldn't choose to eat a guinea pig, but it's a popular delicacy in Peru.

Andean people call guinea pigs cuy, and enjoy them roasted or fried at feasts and festivals.

I was sightseeing in Cusco, the gateway to Machu Picchu, when I came upon an 18th-century painting in the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption, showing Jesus and his disciples gathered around the dinner table about to tuck into what is either a guinea pig or, by some accounts, a chinchilla.

Well, I thought, if it's good enough for Jesus then it's good enough for me.

People told me that guinea pig tasted a bit like rabbit or chicken, but there's always somebody who says that about anything unlikely that they might want you to eat.

Tourists who sample cuy in Peru often do so during tours of Colca Canyon, which depart from the southern city of Arequipa.

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I had to get up before dawn to reach the ridges of the 3400-metre-deep canyon in time to watch condors soar with impossible grace on thermal winds that rise through the cliffs.

I knew that cuy would feature on our lunchtime menu, but I wasn't sure I would be game to try it, right up until the moment it was presented to me as the centrepiece of a meal in a faintly rundown tourist lodge near the town of Achoma.