Ouro Preto - March 24th

We haven’t actually had a very long bus journey for a few weeks now, most of them have only been a couple of hours as we have worked our way through Sao Paulo and Rio De Janeiro states.  But today we are moving to a new state, Minas Gerais, so it involves a long bus journey of 6 hours.

First things first we have to get to the other end of town and the bus station, but this is easily accomplished because we asked the taxi that drove us home last night to meet us at our hotel this morning, and he complied.  After this the journey is not as straight forward.  Our bus is not originating from Petropolis and it is 15 minutes late getting to us.  Bigger problems start when we get underway.  Not too far from Petropolis there has been a large rock fall onto the motorway and it is closed (because of the previous night’s rain).  So we are diverted onto side roads.  This in itself delayed us somewhat, but the bigger delay came from the fact that our driver takes a wrong turn, and the roads are so narrow it is 15 minutes before he can turn back.  Overall the detour cost us an hour and a quarter.

So a 6 hour bus journey is now a 7 ½ hour one.  Other than that it is fine, the countryside is quite hilly but not that beautiful.  Probably the best part is our approach into Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s third largest city.  As we are coming down off a plateau into a valley we get a great view of the city.  But we are only staying in the city long enough to get on a bus to Ouro Preto, an old mining town when the Portuguese were still running things.  This is another 2 hours bus journey, across a very hilly road, so it isn’t fast.  Of course the fact that Brazilian buses seem to stop more often than Argentinian ones might also be a factor in the slowness of the journeys.

When we get there and check into our hostel, which is brilliantly located on the main square, it is almost 9pm, so all we have time to do is have a quick look around the town.  We try to visit a local favourite restaurant, but it has a queue to get into it, so we decide on another place and have something there instead.