Last day in Ouro Preto . . .

It’s our last morning at Pouso do Chico Rei. Today we take the omnibus along the Royal Way, a road built in the mid 1700s to haul gold to Portugal. Sometimes I look at these mountains surrounding this isolated town of Ouro Preto and wonder how the bandierantes, those intrepid Portuguese traders and explorers, found gold here, the mine’s location marked by the strange “finger of god” mountain (seen in the background of this pic of Ouro Preto).


Yet the town remains, isolated for so many years, protected as a colonial national monument since 1913, and now a town of 6,000, augmented at times by tourists, and simply beautiful. Saturday morning as we yet again admired the hillside views out our window, two small parrots came by, squabbling all the way.


Here we explored the Casa do Contos, the counting house, a veritable three story palace with walls in the old style, two feet thick, a library and hand painted faux marble on the second floor, and slave quarters in the basement. A great crack of thunder led to a downpour. As rain slicked cobblestone streets, we rested our feet, grateful to be inside, to sit on the stone stairs in one place.

Today we leave for Foz Iguassu, a land of majestic waterfalls, a bird park and butterflies – and three bus rides of about 27 hour duration. I will hope for internet along the way.

Ouro Preto this week . . .

This week is passing too quickly. We're staying at Pouso do Chico Rei, a small 18th Century colonial inn where Pablo Neruda once slept, in a small town, once a gold mining center, now a tourist destination and national treasure. The first days here, I could hardly believe we truly were in the same place, the same room. I hear echoes of Neruda's poems and dream.



We've wandered these cobblestoned streets, up and down hills, visiting churches and museums. Today we visited an Oratorio Museum full of Baroque religious art and sculpture by Aleijadinho, nicknamed "the little cripple" because he couldn't use his hands to sculpt in stone and so asked his assistants to tie on his mallet and hammers. He taught himself how to paint and sculpt, studying pictures by Michelangelo. We'll go tomorrow to see his famous prophets in the nearby town of Congongas, about 14 kilometers away. It turns out there's controversy about whether Aleijadinho really lived at all; he may have been a myth, yet these fabulous sculptures remain.

I hope this slide show gives you a sense of some of what we've seen, much like the red ribbon hanging down from a saint's statue that connects you directly!



Brazil

Ouro Preto is also a college town about the size of Corvallis. Its 8,000 students live in dormitories called republicas, some public and some private. As they ready for Carnival, we can hear their clubs practicing for the great processions. Think samba music, drums beating complex rhythms, and crowds singing all under a warm starry night.

Yes, we also found a laundry, and I've drunk sweet Brazilian coffee with scoops of homemade vanilla ice cream mixed in. Someone told me sugar is added when the coffee is made, but I don't believe it. The coffee beans are simply fresher here. And I do feel guilty, waking up and seeing this vista out of our two large windows, another sunny day, no reason to work except on writing; it begins to feel like a honeymoon, an interlude, an exploration, an adventure, a beginning.