Arrived in Belo Horizonte, capital of the Minas Gerais state, late last night. It has huge reserves of iron ore and manganese!!

Slept well in my minimalist hotel (swear I was in mother Russia!)…and made my way to pick up my rental car from Avis this morning ….just a 100m away. What planning!! It took them an hour to get me away with all the doccos!! $&@?!@&

With somewhat trepidation, made my way into traffic and then found it quite easy to organically ‘sway’ with what was in front of me…you need to keep your eyes peeled for crazy motorcyclists who come out of nowhere…thought I would spend some hours at the Pampulha complex, Brazilian architect’s Oscar Niemeyer’s first project in the late 1950’s, designing a church, museum and house by the lake. I love this architect! Free-flowing sensual curves are his ‘signature’ in buildings since. 

Then managed to navigate the freeway signs to end up on the right road to Ouro Preto, some 90 kms away. Great aqueduct!…

Founded at the end of the 17th century, Ouro Preto (Black Gold), located in the Serra do Espinhaço mountains, was the focal point of the gold rush and Brazil’s golden age in the 18th century. With the exhaustion of the gold mines in the 19th century, the city’s influence declined but many churches, bridges and fountains remain, a testimony to the exceptional talent of the Baroque sculptor, Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho. His sculptural and architectural work is highly valued by experts as one of the most refined artistic expressions (of Barroco Mineiro) outside Europe at that time. Ouro Preto was also the symbolic center of the Inconfidência Mineira in 1789, a Brazilian independence movement from the Portugese.

It was a nightmare to find my accommodation in Ouro Preto ( general address of Antonio Dias square), crazy motorcyclists darting in front of your vehicle, you simultaneously having to deal with cobbled stoned narrow streets with very steep descents (think Positano on steroids), and not much sign assistance with one way streets..requiring a gal, to reverse back some 100 m X 2, up a steep gradient, to allow others to pass. It was the first time I ever had to put an automatic car into steep gear mode. Oy vay!!! The above is the view from one of the roads I travelled down to get to my Pousada…….An hour later…And very nice it was. Not so the car parking arrangement (too difficult to describe here, a dinner story!). And then there was a huge storm…decided to park myself in accommodation and not move.