Days 32, 33 and 34: Ouro Preto - Baroque, cobblestones and uber-cute 18th century mining towns

We left our little apartment in Rio with full bellies and massive sunburns early in the morning the day after Thanksgiving.  Our itinerary, made months before, had us flying from Rio to Belo Horizonte (a major city in the mountains north of Rio).  From Belo we planned on taking a bus to Ouro Preto and surrounding areas.  Ouro Preto is in the heart of Brazil´s gold and gem country and is the old colonial capital of the state of Minas Gerais.  The town is supposed to be extremely picturesque and we wanted to visit this region of Brazil to see part of the country other than beaches (read on and you´ll see that Ouro Preto is indeed quite picteresque).  Our day of travel was fine, but we proved without a doubt that sometimes it better to take the bus than to fly.  Our apartment was an hour bus ride from Rio´s International airport.  After a two hour wait and a one hour flight we found that we had a one hour bus ride from Belo´s airport to downtown Belo and from there we could catch a two hour bus to Ouro Preto.  This made for a long day.  (For those of you keeping count, this day also brought Olivia´s puke total to 3.  She "lost her frango" (Portuguse for chicken) early during bus ride #3 in the outskirts of Belo.  After puke #2 we took a few barf bags from the airplane and now never leave on a bus or plane trip without some). 

We´ve also become quite lax on our travel planning.  We arrived at the Rio airport with no reservations at any hotel or pousada, we figured that our wait for our flight would be a good time to get our 5 day trip to Ouro Preto organized.  This was also the time that we read that there is a 7 hour overnight bus from Rio to Ouro Preto.  This time our flight was certainly a mistake.  We have become fairly good at getting along with Portuguese as well.  When we (Chris) called hotels in the Ouro Preto area, we´d start with "voce fala ingles?" (do you speak English?)  If the answer was "yes" we are golden...if no, then we move on to Spanish, and, finally, if the answer is no again, we manage to speak in Portuguese.  The language is similar to Spanish, and thankfully a lot of people speak Spanish, but its been somewhat difficult to communicate, especially compared to our time in Argentina.

After our 1+2+1+1+2 hours of bus/wait/air/bus/bus travel we were rewarded with Ouro Preto.  The town is quite simply incredible.  It is built deep in the mountains and is criss-crossed with streets steeper than San Francisco.  The city was the capital of Minas Gerais (the state we are in right now) for several hundred years during the Brazilian gold rush.  As such, it is filled with colonial buildings and Baroque churches and cobblestone streets.  To make matters even more "cute", there is not one 20th century building in the city center.  It really has the feel of the 18th century.  All cobblestone, streets and sidewalks so narrow we cannot walk side by side, streets so steep that we are exhausted at the end of the day after so much hiking. 

We have visited several churches.  They are incredible ornate, covered with gold and statues.  Other churches were built by slaves and have incredibly intricate carvings, both on the inside and outside.  Ouro Preto was home to one of Brazil´s most famous artists, Aleijadinho ("little cripple") who carved much of the exterior of the churches in the region and is an important figure internationally in terms of his contributions to Baroque art.  Incredibly, he did much of his work after he´d lost use of his hands and feet to an undetermined illness.

Ouro Preto is also quite an artistic community. There are many local handicrafts from the regional sources. We were successfully tempted into buying more art for our future home: this time, carvings from soapstone (fortunately this is a special kind of rock that is practically weightless and folds down to the size of a pair of athletic socks-- just kidding). Seriously though, we have enjoyed watching the artists carve and learning about the techniques, all with the low pressure sales which we have appreciated through out all of our travels on this trip. "Ouro Preto" literally means "black gold"; this area is the heart of the mining region, famous for all sorts of stones and gems. We had a fabulous time negotiating some "bling" with a nice jewelry artist and his wife, mostly in Spanish, with the occassional "no problem... very good price..." to reassure us (since neither of us shop for precious stones in the US, we weren´t quite sure, but felt that our new amigos were fair with us). On the Saturday night of our Ouro Preto stay, there also happened to be a free recital in a space below an art gallery. We weren´t able to locate the space despite the shortness of the street, and had to return to our pousada to fetch the exact address. Therefore we were 20 minutes late (better late than never when it comes to Mozart and Frank violin and piano sonatas!), but Latin time was on our side and we sat down just before the introductory announcements. Olivia, although formerly averaging 6 concerts a month in her college days, has lacked in classical music attendance over the past few years; this was Chris´ first time at such an intimate music performance. The musicians were truly talented, with delightful and interesting interpretations. We were especially invited into the experience with out front and center seats, not missing a single audible breath, flying bead of perspiration, or pained expression reflecting the composer´s intentions. It really made Olivia miss her former music involvement-- for the pure music itself, and of course the friends and the physical challenge and artistic stimulation too. We are having such a marvelous time on this trip, but a good percentage of time is spent discussing our futures: lives in CA, jobs, and priorities with resurrecting old or exlporing new hobbies. Sometimes being away is a great time to reflect on those matters. So Olivia may become a street musician by day/tango dancer by night and Chris a scientist by day/industrial designer by night...

This afternoon we rode a recently restored train down the canyon from Ouro Preto to a nearby town named Mariana.  Mariana, like Ouro Preto, has an old city center with ornate Baroque churches.  Also very picturesque, though less "happening" than Ouro Preto.  The train ride was pretty, but slow and loud, but we were able to take a bus back.  Tomorrow we go to a mountain park and a mine and then back to Belo for a Tuesday morning flight to Port Seguro on the Bahian coast.