Belo Horizonte Euanopolis Bus - March 28th

Today we leave Belo Horizonte and Minas Gerais for Bahia and the beach.  But as all the long distance buses going north in this part of the world are overnight buses, we have to fill a long gap between our checkout time of 10:00 and our bus departure at 20:00.  So what do you do with 10 hours in Belo Horizonte, the answer is quite simple, you get out of Belo Horizonte.  The UNESCO World Heritage site of Congonhas is 80km away, and the buses are frequent enough that a day trip is easily accomplished.

So after leaving our bags in the left luggage in Belo Horizonte bus station, we get the 11:00 bus to Congonhas.  This is actually all the way back the way we came from Petropolis on Saturday, so there isn’t much new scenery to see.  The bus station in Congonhas is of course on the edge of town, so when we get there we get a taxi to the square with the Basilica do Bom Jesus de Matosinhos.  This is the actual UNESCO site, and when we get there we see three other tourists leaving, meaning we are the only ones there.  It is pretty bleak, but luckily for us it means that there isn’t much hassle from vendors, tour guides or anything.  In fact the cleaning staff and security guards outnumber the tourists 10 to 2.  The Basilica itself isn’t the main attraction (and it’s not that big, smaller than average for a church) but the 12 statues of various Old Testament prophets outside it are.  These were carved by the local genius Aleijadinho, and are said to be the greatest of his works.  I have to say they weren’t as impressive as I thought they would be.  There are also some chapels with the Stations of the Cross there which I thought were better.

Once we looked around for about 30 minutes that was it.  Because we were going on a long journey we ate a large dinner in a hotel across from the Basilica, where we were the only two customers, and then they got us a taxi back to the Congonhas bus station, and we headed back to Belo Horizonte.  We were back by 17:00 leaving us 3 hours to kill in the bus station, which we are not experts in.  Luckily it isn’t the worst bus station we have been to, so we were able to pass the time before getting on the bus.

The bus journey itself though was not great.  In order to get from Belo to the coast we have to head back over mountains, and rather than a highway, we were on a narrow twisty road.  The road was dangerous, we saw two recent crashes (recent enough that the police were still on the scene) before we decided to try to sleep.  But sleep was hard because the bus was always throwing you around the place, and because of the number of stops to let others on.

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.

Belo Horizonte - March 26th

As today is a Monday, all the museums are closed, so the ones we didn’t get to yesterday can’t be visited.  And because the rain is still around, we can’t even hang around Ouro Preto waiting for better photo shots, so we leave early and head to Belo Horizonte.  This time on the road back in the daylight we see one of the reasons our bus was going slow, there are a number of places where the recent rain has caused a lot of subsidence.  Some of the road is under repair, but the damage is quite extensive.

Once in Belo we go to our hostel and check in.  This is in a part of town called Santa Teresa, which is supposed to be a nice part of town, yet the hostel, and all its neighbours, are behind massive security fences topped with electric wires.   Yet we are assured by the owners it is a safe area.  It is not very confidence inspiring.  I think the Brazilians have a different view of what safe mean.  We ask about getting into the centre of town and they advise us to take the metro, but when we begin to walk to it the road looks so dodgy we turn back and instead take the bus, which isn’t much better, but otherwise we would be stuck in this neighbourhood.

The centre of Belo isn’t that attractive.  There are some nice old buildings knocking about, but it is mostly high rise developments, and the buildings are too far apart to walk to.  One or two plazas look good, but that is about it.  Also it is extremely hilly (San Francisco style) and is therefore tiring to walk around, so all in all we don’t really spend too much time sightseeing.

Instead we go to the cinema.   The film is Safehouse starring Denzel Washington.  That is not really important, but what is interesting is a fact I picked up about the film.  Part of it is set in the shanty towns of Cape Town, but originally it was to be set in the Favelas of Rio.  However it was deemed to be too dangerous to film in Rio.  Rio needs to take a look at itself with the big sporting events coming up.  You know you have sunk to new lows when South Africa is safer.

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.

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.

Petropolis - March 23rd

Our full day in Petropolis starts with the completion of the sightseeing that we didn’t get to do the previous day.  Although it turns out there isn’t that much more.  Amazingly after the massive thunder, lightning and rain storm we had the previous evening the streets are not too wet, and so we are able to walk alongside the canals (built as storm drains) that run down the centre of all the main roads as we look at some of the more spectacular colonial style buildings in town.  But none of them are open to the public, including the current presidential summer residence.  Where the royals used to come here to escape Rio, the current presidents come here to escape Brasilia.  Because we aren’t going to visit there I can’t say who is getting the better deal.

One house that is now a museum is the house of Santos Dumont.  He is one of the great pioneers of aviation and the man who popularised the wearing of wristwatches.  Needless the say the Brazilians are quite proud of him and have a museum in his house.  The only problem is that as a practical man who was also not very tall, his house is tiny.  Still it is interesting and has some good exhibits from his life.  Although it has to be said that our hotel, named 14 Bis after his plane, has almost as many artefacts.

Once we finish with Santos Dumont there is really only one sight to see, a large shrine to Our Lady of Fatima which overlooks the town and provides great views.  However the road up to it looks like it goes through a flavela, so we decide not to walk up.  I think it is for driving only.

Because we are finished early we go back to our hotel where we plan to lie by the swimming pool (something that we have never actually done on this trip, even though a few places we have stayed in have had them) but as we get there it starts to rain, so we take a siesta.  In the evening we go out for a meal, which is a very large and very good steak dinner, and then we take a taxi back to the hotel on account of me nearly breaking my toe on the way out of the hotel.  Again this night there is an unbelievable amount of rain.

Petropolis - March 22nd

Today we leave Teresopolis and go to Petropoils.  All these ‘opolis’ places can get a bit confusing, but they seem to be quite popular here.  I haven’t found Metropolis yet, but if we do then we will pay Superman a visit.  For the moment Petropolis is the closest we will get to it.

Because they are so close, and because we like hanging around our nice hotel in Teresopolis, we are only getting the midday bus, so we have a leisurely breakfast, pack, and walk down to the bus station.  The walk downhill from our hotel is almost as bad with the backpacks on as walking up was.  The bus journey had some really good views of the mountains, but it was so twisty and hilly that both of us were feeling a little queasy when we go to Petropolis.  The bus station for the town is about 10km from downtown (like Teresopolis this is a city built along a long valley so it is long but not very wide), so we then had to get a taxi to our hotel.  Despite it being only a 2 hour trip we were quite exhausted by the time we got there.  The new hotel was every bit as nice as the last one, maybe even nicer, but it is costing a bit more.

We decide to begin our exploration of Petropolis immediately, and we go to the old imperial palace where the Brazilian royal family used to spend summer.  Petropolis is much more of an old imperial city than Teresopolis, and better preserved.  Whether because they didn’t have much money (compared to European monarchies of the time) or whether they deliberately avoided being ostentatious the palace and its furnishings were not too grand, but the imperial crown with all its jewels was.  After visiting the palace, we visited the cathedral to see where the last king, queen and princess were buried.

Once the first part of our sightseeing was complete we walked along some of the shopping streets in the town.  Petropolis is a large enough town, and it has a lot of students and weekend visitors, but the shopping isn’t great.  Because we had a late breakfast, and no real lunch after the bus (due to queasiness) we choose to have an early dinner in an Italian restaurant, although amazingly at 6pm we weren’t the only diners, a record for South America.