Ouro Preto - March 25th

The reason we are in Ouro Preto is because it is the best preserved of the Old Portuguese colonial mining towns in the interior of Brazil.  In the 18^th century gold was found in the area, and using African slave labour, the Portuguese exploited it for all it is worth.  The result was that at one point Ouro Preto (the name means Black Gold) was the richest town in all of the Americas.  And this in turn lead to the construction of many fine churches and other buildings.  And eventually this led to it being the first UNESCO world heritage site in Brazil.

After breakfast we begin to walk around the town.  Being a Sunday there is one complication, not that the churches are in use as I had feared, but the museums all only open at midday.  So our early start has to content itself with external photos (they aren’t allowed inside most locations anyway).  Luckily it is sunny at this point, because as midday arrives it begins to rain quite heavily, so we end up having to shelter inside the various museums.  There are quite a few museums, one for religious artefacts, one about the Brazilian independence movement which also began in this town (and died a quick death first time around – one section of the museum in the former jail, showing the tombs of the dead rebels, is very like Kilmainham in Dublin) and one for a sculptor called Aleijadinho.  He was a crippled sculptor who created his own style of sculpting and used in in the creation of the many churches in Ouro Preto.  There are 17 of them, most on hills, but we only have time to visit 4 of them.  They are all very impressive on the inside, some would even say quite over the top in the ostentation of their décor.

On top of all this we did also go on a mine tour.  The best mines are outside the town, but as we didn’t have time to visit them, we went on the tour of a mine which was owned by a tribal chief from Africa, Chico-Rei, who managed to buy his freedom and then a mine, and then he used the proceeds of the mine to buy the freedom of all the slaves from his tribe.  Naturally he is a folk legend in these parts.  The mine itself wasn’t great, but it did give us a sense of the history of the place.

That was pretty much the day.  We got into the restaurant that was full the previous night for a very nice lunch, and in the evening went for snacks across the square from the hostel.  The rain never really let up all day, and this seemed to keep the town quiet in the evening.  So instead of hanging out we went back to our hostel and watched TV in the TV room.  It sounds boring but we were really exhausted because the town is incredibly hilly, and it is very tiring just walking around it.  Add to this the fact that you are walking on slippery cobble stones everywhere, and it is no surprise our legs were aching.