Belo Horizonte - March 27th

As there is nothing really to see in Belo Horizonte, it is simply not a tourist town, you may wonder why we are staying an extra day there.  The answer is simply called INHOTIM.  This is a place we heard about from a German couple we met in Paraty, and we have since looked up.  It is hard to describe, one third botanical gardens, one third art gallery and one third open air art installation.  It is located 50km outside Belo so we get a taxi to the bus station and get the one bus a day that goes there at 09:15.

The journey there isn’t great.  As with all the roads in Minas Gerais it is hilly, but also the added extra of speed bumps really makes for an unpleasant journey.  But once we get there all is forgotten (after a quick drink) as we begin to look around.  As with a lot of modern art some of it is pretty way out there, but some of it is pretty clever and some of it is quite fun.  For example one of the galleries has rooms with hammocks, balloons, or a bouncy floor, and the art is how we interact with them (lazing in a hammock is now art!).  Another was a large number of flower pots in the shapes of different letters and the art is how we arrange them.  So there is some fun.  The best part of all was the price; we got there on a day when they were giving free entry.

We spend the whole day there, wandering around the park, looking at the palm trees (apparently this is the largest collection of palm trees in the world), and eating the high priced snacks where they make up for the free entry.  We had thought that 5 ½ hours in the park might be too long, but there was so much to do that we could have used the whole time if only it hadn’t been so hot, which tired us out quite a bit.  So we were not in a good mood to have the journey back delayed half an hour by the rush hour traffic.

For dinner we wanted to go to one of the best restaurants in Belo.  We knew it was a bit outside the centre of town, so we had to get a taxi, but it wasn’t very comforting when the taxi driver didn’t know where it was.  But he had GPS so we thought it would be OK, except he didn’t know how to follow the instructions on how to exit a roundabout.  Eventually after explaining it to him we got there, but it was a bit worrying as we went down some wrong turns. The restaurant itself was supposed to be in one of the best neighbourhoods in Belo, but when we got to it there was an armed guard standing in the door.  His job was to escort diners to and from their cars.  The people of Belo need some lessons on what makes a good neighbourhood.  Not armed guards.  Anyway the meal was nice and then we got a taxi home.  We had decided to skip the Belo highlight, a church in this area designed by Oscar Niemeyer, because of the dodginess of the area.  But we still got a good look at this dodginess as a weirdo jumped out in front of our taxi on a dark road.  We were sure it was a robbery but our taxi driver just sped past him, later saying he was either a drug addict or a mental patient.  However it doesn’t do anything to change the view that Belo is not really a place for tourists.