Epic cross-cultural misunderstanding

So my friend B frequents a bakery a few doors down from our hostel. She´s there multiple times a day, and the owner has started chatting with her and teaching her about the traditional Peruvian cookies and cakes.

Yesterday was B´s birthday. She mentioned this to the bakery owner, who was very excited and offered to get her a gift. She asked B if she had every heard of some spanish word she had never heard of. B said no. The owner tried to explain, saying that it was little and green and had something to do with the market down by the river. B figured it must be some kind of cookie or food item and was excited when the woman told her to come back this afternoon and she would have one of whatever it was for her.

Afternoon comes, and B heads back to the bakery, hungry. Only to have the woman present her with:



Yes, a baby turtle in a two-liter soda bottle.

"Por una mascota (for a pet)," she explained.

It turned out the bakery owner had actually spent the entire afternoon down by the river in order to catch B a baby turtle. For a pet. B was, well, speechless, and couldn´t quite figure out a polite way to decline.

And that´s the story of our pet baby turtle, Keke. And why it´s probably a good idea to carry a dictionary.

(We initially named her "torta" which means cake in Spanish, appropriate on many levels. But eventually this morphed into Keke, the local Peruvian slang for cake.)

We´d like to release her into the wild, but the scene of 5 gringas carrying a soda bottle full of turtle down to the river is not something that would go unnoticed in this town, and we don´t want to offend the bakery owner.