Lima--Barranco

I was a tourist in Lima for two days before catching my flight to Manzanillo. I stayed at the Barranco Backpackers Inn, a hostel near the ocean in the area called Barranco. Miraflores is known as the tourist area of Lima, and Barranco is known as the "hippie" tourist area. I also heard it described as Bohemian.
Artists live and work in this area and there is music going on often, traditional dancing, pottery and painting. I had some more ceviche!

I went to two museums while in Barranco.
Museo Pedro de Osma featured colonial religious paintings and sculpture, showing how Europe (Spain) implemented catholicism, adapting the indigenous perspectives and ideology just like all of the Americas. This was very interesting and the styles coming from Peru are very distinctive.

I then walked two doors down to the MATE museum which is designed to promote photography. The permanent exhibit is of Mario Testino who designed and opened the museum. His photography is famous the world over.
Orlando Bloom kissing David Beckham, me hanging with Justin Bieber, celebrities and models, and an interesting exhibit of groups of people modeling traditional Peruvian clothes used in ceremonies and festivals.

He photographed Princess Diana a few months before her death, and one of the rooms was devoted to the photographs that were published in Vanity Fair. One of the dresses she auctioned off for her charitites is also on display. Because Testino admired her for her charity work, he donated the proceeds of the photo shoot to her charities as well. 

He also photographed William and Kate's engagement.

He described how he had taken the formal shots and that they were ok, but after William and Kate had changed their clothes and were outside of the studio, talking to Testino, he said, "Right here" and took the famous informal shot of them the same day.

 I am now a fan of Mario Testino. The variety in his work is so interesting.
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Testino

The next day I visited the Larco museum in Miraflores which has pre-Columbian artifacts of Peru, artfully displayed by epoch and theme. George would love it. The gardens on the property were beautiful. It has an open warehouse storage area, one of the few in the world, where all that the museum holds, but is not displayed, can still be seen. This was very interesting to me, because we see what the people who make displays have to choose from. There is a little restaurant there and a room with erotic ceramics which were found in each part of that 5000 year span. One of the interesting things I learned about Peruvian spiritual history and its connection to agriculture, was the use of the bird (owl or condor) representing the sky where the rain comes from, the feline, representing the earth that must be worked for planting, and the snake, representing the underworld where the plants grow from. These three animals are used in the artwork of everyday objects as the deities that support life.

I also visited the Inka Market, famous in Miraflores. Fraser bought me a scarf when he visited Lima a few years ago from here and I bought another. It's 70 percent baby alpaca and 30 percent silk. Beautiful, but I have to "carry it'. Good think it's light! I took the picture of the latte and empanada for Donna. (I needed to use the washroom so I bought my lunch in a little cafe)

On Fraser's recommendation I finished my tourist day with a lomo salida de criolle for supper. Then I headed to the airport for my overnight trip to Mexico.