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As Justino gutted the spider-monkey he began preparing it for cooking. It was the way he threaded the arms and legs, with the rib cage of the creature wide open, that made for an impressive visual.
With amazement on my face I asked him to pose with the monkey for me, so here he is with full smile holding his kitchen creation. To some individuals who find this kind of reality disturbing I grew up in the midst of the Inuit and Indians of Canada where killing-carving-eating animals, just as they do here in the Amazon forest, is not a new thing for me. Add monkey to a list of creatures that include whale, caribou, reindeer, moose, seal, and so on, I constantly ate as a child in the Northwest Territories. The animal being killed and photographed is not, I admit, of a usual kind but on a three week hike of the rainforest -- all four of us males being unforgiving meat eaters -- we chose to hunt for food. I should add it is not merely an exotic palate that leads me to sample such meat. When I asked Tomba the cook what his favorite type of forest meat is he simply stated "spider-monkey." For him it is perfectly normal to eat spider-monkey, just as it is normal for the Inuit of northern Canada to hunt and eat a whale or a seal. In Peru the way the monkey was poorly prepared-cooked resulted in tough meat tasting like burnt fur. A piece of me was loathe to contemplate eating monkey again. But here in Bolivia, with Justino's excellent cleaning as well as Tomba's preparation, the tender meat of this spider-monkey was a surprising pleasure to eat.
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