23/07/2019 – Barranco, Lima, then travel day to Cusco, Peru

We got up and packed our things, showered, and made ourselves breakfast in the hostel. We checked out and got into an Uber, which took us to the Mario Testino gallery in the Barranco district of Lima. Barranco is a bohemian area of Lima, another district you can wander safely by foot. One at the gallery we got our tickets, and with nowhere to store our luggage, walked around the gallery with our big backpacks on! I hadn’t realised Mario Testino was Peruvian! We saw his collection of celebrities, of Princess Diana, and of traditional Peruvian dress. The photos were huge and colourful, well displayed and I think Josh found it quite inspiring.

Wandering around the exibition with rucksacks on

After checking out the gallery shop we walked down the road to café Bissetti – a lonely planet recommendation. It served delicious handpicked organic Peruvian coffee, and we had some paninis too. We used the Wifi and got ourselves sorted for the journey ahead whilst waiting for our Uber to arrive. We got an Uber to the bus terminal. The Uber drivers phone kept falling off its stand and our driver kept slowing down on the motorway to pick it up, he took the wrong turning a few times, fair to say Josh was pretty worried about missing our bus! When we got to the terminal, we leaped out the car and ran in to the terminal, got our luggage tagged, and then were told to relax, this is South America remember! We boarded our bus, using the Excluciva company we had had used on the last long bus journey. Again we were in the front seats of the top deck, in chairs that recline 180°. It was a bit of an older version than the state of the art bus we had previously, but the seats were comfy enough all the same. Also we have learnt that when the bus advertises WiFi, it is a lie as it never works! Again we got served an edible rice dinner in a little aluminium box, and Josh and I watched Netflix on the ipad into the night.