Before having lunch on Saturday, Leslie and I wondered around the pedestrian area of Buenos Aires for a little bit (Calle Florida).

We stopped in one leather shop that Leslie knew and she bought a lovely briefcase made from Carpincho which is the world’s largest rodent! The signage in the shop said that these animals only exist in South America, but I know I saw one in Costa Rica (i.e. Central America) but there they are called Capibara.

The leather is amazingly soft and has a slightly speckled look.  It is just funny to me how proud various shops were to post information that the leather is from a rodent, etc.  In the U.S. they would have a team of marketers trying to figure out how to sell this stuff without having to confess that the animal was from the rodent family.

You can see that he is kind of cute, really, like a large guinea pig, as they say.  I wonder if they exist (or did) exist in Peru or if they ate them all (they love guinea pig)!

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