some notes from a travelogue i wrote while teaching english
in brazil in 2000 - 2001:
i was able to travel during easter weekend because we had saturday and monday off. (i normally work monday-friday and 6 hours on sat. so extensive travel is impossible). i was invited by a family to join them in a trip to the vast state of minas gerais. the name means general mines and indeed there are silver, gold and other metals there, plus precious and semi-precious stones such as emerald and amethyst. this was the main area that the portuguese explored and exploited during their conquest of brazil.
the scenery in minas gerais is fantastic. miles and miles of green hills and mountains, like pictures i have seen of ireland. raising cows is the main economic activity, and the region is well known for its cheeses. we stayed on a farm that is 250 years old. our rooms were rustic but decent. the main house was beautiful, with all kinds of antiques and oddities collected over the years. 90% of all the food served to the hotel guests is produced on the farm. we ate 3 delicious meals a day in their dining room. we got to talk with other families that were staing there also. one little boy "Caio" (pronounced kigh-oh) was talking to us so much that i thought he was a relative of one of the people in our group! he wasn't. this family i went with is quite large, and aunts, uncles, brothers, cousins, grandmas all came, in about 5 separate cars. i wonder if people from different parties all hang out together and talk after dinner in bed and breakfast inns in the USA? anyway, this was really a nice atmosphere. like having a huge family gathering - which i have never had, since my family is rather small.
at this hotel/farm, there were horses, but we did not have time to ride them. we drove 1.5 hours to são paulo, then 7 more hours to this farm in minas gerais. on the way home, there was so much traffic going back into são paulo that we spent an extra 2 hours just driving the last 100 km into the city. ugh. i tried to keep us entertained with songs and stories and jokes. we were literally sitting still without moving an inch for 15-30 minutes at a time. then we would advance a bit, and then sit still some more. people were selling water and soft drinks and popcorn, etc, on the highway! very enterprising individuals.
but i digress - back to the hotel in minas gerais - there were about 6 different waterfalls near the farm. we would drive on dirt and rock roads, very bumpy with some big holes/gouges in the road, then we would park the truck and hike to a waterfall. the great thing was that the hikes were fairly short, and you could walk right into the waterfalls! people swam in the pools at the bottom of the falls, although the water was very cold. i even went down a natural waterslide made of smooth rock! i slid down a waterfall! when the group told me we were going to do this, i said "no way". i had visions of my shorts and legs getting ripped apart by sharp rocks... but it turned out to be incredibly smooth rock because of years water flowing over it. i had a great time. i took lots of pictures, but they never seem to do justice to the incredible beauty of nature.
the town near the farm is called carrancas; the name means "ugly faces" which is because there was a rock formation that looked like 2 people making scary faces at each other. the northerners carve statues of these ugly-faced people and put them on the sterns of their boats to scare away evil spirits.
after leaving carrancas, we decided to stop in são thomé das letras, which is known to be a mystical town where spiritual people from all over go to bask in the energy. they have seen ufo's there, and the whole town seems to be made of stone.
unfortunately, i did not even get to take any pictures because the elderly man who was driving our car was sick and tired of dirt roads and the rocks damaging the underside of his new car (a VW Golf, which is not made for dirt road driving). we had spent about 6 hours on paved and dirt roads to get to this town, then we just got a coke and some bread and he insisited we leave right away. there WERE a ton of people in the streets. it looked like woodstock all over again. tie dyes and birkenstocks. people had tents up everywhere. i would have liked to have stayed long enough to take some pictures of the stone church and the pyramid, and to talk to some of these characters, but we had to rush off. why? for another 9 hours of driving to get back to são paulo, of course!! i did talk briefly to one shop owner and bought a few postcards and tiny stone houses. he was argentinian, and had come there for a visit, and never left. he has lived there for 4 years, and says he is enchanted by the place. sadly, i don't think i will ever get to go back there, 'cause most people don't like to drive on those dirt roads.
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