Pousada Burgalhau Ouro Preto

... zajimavy, ale dost maly, dostali jsme nastesti helmy, protoze jsem se cestou nekolikrat pekne bouhl do hlavy. Byl tam pruvodce, ktery chtel vstupne 15 realu od kazdeho, ale nakonec jsme to usmlouvali na 5 dohromady, tak to uz nebylo tak hrozny. Cestou zpatky jsem se stavili v mistni telocvicne, kde male deti cvicily capoieru (neco mezi tancem a bojovym umenim). Pomahali jsme jim vyrabet nove pasky a hrali jsme spolecne na bubny a ruzne jine nastroje. Vecer jsme ...

... as much as possible between the sellers to make as many people as possible happy. Any 5 or 19 Reais would make it.

Next we went back to take the main road, and while on the secondary road we stoped by overlooking a nice waterfall to meet the real dealers that showed us their stupendous rough specimens and polished gemstones.

On the road now to Governador Valadares. Overnight in Governador Valadares.

... it, then making the base facets. After another lapidary takes over cutting the actual facets and giving the gem its final form. Finally another makes the polishing and high polishing making the gem ready to mount in jewellery. the Australina couple was amazed on how the lapidary worked in such a free artistic way, completely different from everything they have seen before. It is all recorded in video you can see below parts of it and all parts on you tube at:

Ouro Preto, State of Minas Gerais, Brazil uly4

... The town is famous for mining and therefore has 100´s of jewelery shops which I dragged Eugene into (not all of them). There was some shopping, but I did hold off buying any huge imperial topaz necklace which would have set the travel budget back a wee bit! I was tempted and had the credit card out at stages but resisted the urge.

The 6th August we set off bright and early for the last truck day into Rio, the whole group was ...

... that of St Francis, has a famous ceiling with "Our Lady" being taken to heaven by cherubs. When you look at it you can definitely see she has negroid features, although she is white! As well as the churches it was possible to go into the mine owned by Chico Rei to see some of the old tunnels, most have been cleaned up and are easy to walk in, but the last 200m's has been left as it was and you have to struggle up ...

... household on that very train. So they had all don their white uniforms and played at their best to his honour. I knew I had done something right when I decided to stay. The whole parade went on through the city to the main street, where I decided to leave them alone and go for one of the best Lasagne I´ve ever had, with a lovely creamy sauce and just delicious, once again at a self-serve restaurant. Now I´m thinking of installing a hidden camera in their kitchen to ...

... walk around this pretty colonial town where not one house seems to be less than at last 100 or 200 years old. Brazil had its own gold rush long before California and Australia, and that´s when this town was booming. When Rio de Janeiro had only twenty thousand inhabitants, Ouro Preto had over a hundred thousand - almost twice the number of today. It must have been a wild and crazy time, with fortunes ...

... has the right dish, and some are even open 24 hours. There is only one thing better than that, which has also come to the remotest places: Chocolaterias. Here the theme is chocolate, and apart from the usual chocolates and pralines, you can have many different dishes all about chocolate, or iced drinking chocolate with vanilla ice cream, not the instant powder variety but real melted dark chocolate. Good to die for. Or dip fresh fruits in ...

... rules (completely different) so I ended up just watching him play. He was a top man though and we had a cracking chat for about 90 minutes about all sorts of stuff. Starting to realise that it's usually not the backpackers that you meet who are the interesting people generally (they are too similar to yourself to be truly interesting) - rather its the locals/long time travelers who are much more interesting because they have a different story to tell.

... really nice churches and buildings on the way.

This one had a really cool little antiques market outside it.



It's quite a hilly town, so you were always either looking down over nice buildings, or ...