Ouro Preto
Had we arrived in Ouro Preto by plane, it wouldn't have taken much to convince me we'd landed in Portuguese-speaking Italy. Since we drove there, though, I knew in my head we were still in Brazil. Still, very little about Ouro Preto reminded me of what I had known Brazil to be. No samba, busses, newspaper stands, lanchonetes, or street art. Gone (or at least distant) were the bare-brick houses, mango trees, and purveyors of street food. We had entered a part of Brazil that I didn't know what to make of.
Sprouting from the Portuguese-built mining industry (and fueled by slave labor well into the late 1800s), Ouro Preto (literally "Black Gold") is a remarkably charming town paved almost entirely with cobblestones weaving narrow paths up and down the city's historic topography of pure European influence. There may well be more churches in Ouro Preto than bakeries, and the bells in any number of towers are almost certainly resounding over the tiles of narrow houses even now. We spent entire days wandering the winding roads between museums, mines, coffee shops, and doing our best to end them at an incredibly tasty Italian restaurant with incredible ambience—something quite hard to come by in Belém. Also, the prices are unbeatable, because the host, chef, waiter, and buss-boy are all the same incredible person.
There are few "charming" cities I've been to where it feels like real people actually live non-storybook lives. Italian cities come to mind: Venice, Cinque Terre, Tuscanny. In fact, in all of Italy, Florence is really the only city that I could conceivably imagine myself living in. Ouro Preto is similar in this sense. Yes, it is remarkably picturesque, but it's never a quaintness that would remind someone of a scene from Disneyland. It's very much a real place, where people produce contemporary art, not just stiff, 17th century portraits of brass-clad victors. The church bells ring, but so do the toy cymbals of the percussionist in the avant-garde duet. (The other musician was a cellist, and I rather dorkily confess, their performance was by far the funnest hour and a half I've had in a very long time.) Plazas are adorned with regal figurines from ages past, but the city is strewn with the shredded corporeal images of a visiting sculptor. Ouro Preto is a city that's both remarkably traditional and yet, instead of being frozen in antiquity, still very much alive.
Had we arrived in Ouro Preto by plane, it wouldn't have taken much to convince me we'd landed in Portuguese-speaking Italy. Since we drove there, though, I knew in my head we were still in Brazil. Still, very little about Ouro Preto reminded me of what I had known Brazil to be. No samba, busses, newspaper stands, lanchonetes, or street art. Gone (or at least distant) were the bare-brick houses, mango trees, and purveyors of street food. We had entered a part of Brazil that I didn't know what to make of.
Sprouting from the Portuguese-built mining industry (and fueled by slave labor well into the late 1800s), Ouro Preto (literally "Black Gold") is a remarkably charming town paved almost entirely with cobblestones weaving narrow paths up and down the city's historic topography of pure European influence. There may well be more churches in Ouro Preto than bakeries, and the bells in any number of towers are almost certainly resounding over the tiles of narrow houses even now. We spent entire days wandering the winding roads between museums, mines, coffee shops, and doing our best to end them at an incredibly tasty Italian restaurant with incredible ambience—something quite hard to come by in Belém. Also, the prices are unbeatable, because the host, chef, waiter, and buss-boy are all the same incredible person.
There are few "charming" cities I've been to where it feels like real people actually live non-storybook lives. Italian cities come to mind: Venice, Cinque Terre, Tuscanny. In fact, in all of Italy, Florence is really the only city that I could conceivably imagine myself living in. Ouro Preto is similar in this sense. Yes, it is remarkably picturesque, but it's never a quaintness that would remind someone of a scene from Disneyland. It's very much a real place, where people produce contemporary art, not just stiff, 17th century portraits of brass-clad victors. The church bells ring, but so do the toy cymbals of the percussionist in the avant-garde duet. (The other musician was a cellist, and I rather dorkily confess, their performance was by far the funnest hour and a half I've had in a very long time.) Plazas are adorned with regal figurines from ages past, but the city is strewn with the shredded corporeal images of a visiting sculptor. Ouro Preto is a city that's both remarkably traditional and yet, instead of being frozen in antiquity, still very much alive.
Serra do Caraça
No one wanted to leave Caraça. It was called a sanctuary for a reason. For the first time in who knows how long, we found ourselves surrounded by rolling landscape that was truly untouched. As far as we could see, trees rested on long stretches of hills, the waves of green every so often broken by a rocky peak stretching into the clouds. And it was quiet. Gone were the hisses of busses braking to stop after stop, the horns, jackhammers, fireworks. It wasn't silent; wind rustled through everything, and dozens of species of birds chirped all the day long. But it was a calming quiet.
We had planned to pass right through Caraça. But upon arriving at the monastery there just in time for a locally-grown organic lunch buffet, which was the cleanest (and tastiest) thing we'd eaten in ages, we considered the possibility of extending our stay. And stay we did, long enough for a bit of meditation and reflection in the eternal golden hours, hiking that genuinely made our bodies breathe and beat, and a few more meals that were nothing short of spiritual. But all too soon, it was again time to leave the peace of the forest and return to the road.
No one wanted to leave Caraça. It was called a sanctuary for a reason. For the first time in who knows how long, we found ourselves surrounded by rolling landscape that was truly untouched. As far as we could see, trees rested on long stretches of hills, the waves of green every so often broken by a rocky peak stretching into the clouds. And it was quiet. Gone were the hisses of busses braking to stop after stop, the horns, jackhammers, fireworks. It wasn't silent; wind rustled through everything, and dozens of species of birds chirped all the day long. But it was a calming quiet.
We had planned to pass right through Caraça. But upon arriving at the monastery there just in time for a locally-grown organic lunch buffet, which was the cleanest (and tastiest) thing we'd eaten in ages, we considered the possibility of extending our stay. And stay we did, long enough for a bit of meditation and reflection in the eternal golden hours, hiking that genuinely made our bodies breathe and beat, and a few more meals that were nothing short of spiritual. But all too soon, it was again time to leave the peace of the forest and return to the road.