Minas-ing about

Hello, loyal readers (ie Mum). I haven’t been posting recently because my day to day life is essentially waking up, going to class, eating, dancing, trying to study, collapsing into bed, then at the end of the week being amazed that it’s already Friday, essentially it’s so average that it’s not worth posting about, except on my instagram story.

Since it’s Easter we got Thursday and Friday off uni, and decided that it was time for a roadtrip! Since we all failed to get on the university trip to Tiradentes, we thought we could do it alone, so two Brazilians and two gringas hit the road!

We found an airbnb in São João del Rei, (a town 10km away from Tiradentes). The airbnb turned out to be two very cute rooms in a vegan restaurant! Since my new flatmate Mary is a vegan (check out her blog: https://marybthatsme.wordpress.com/), and I’m a veggie, this was very exciting stuff. After a very healthy vegan lunch we went to explore the town.

São João del Rei turned out to have a small, very pretty historic centre divided by a glorified creek, I say glorified because the bridges were much grander than the trickle of water. We saw three churches, all with tolling bells (for Easter), and lots of small colourful little houses. After an afternoon of hitting up all the sites, and coming across a church with a beautiful choir singing, it was time to find a bar to eat, drink, and watch the football, because Cruzeiro (Belo Horizonte’s biggest team) was playing.

 

Sao Joao del Rei

Sao Joao del Rei

Sao Joao del Rei

After what felt like a nap, at 10am it was time to hit the road and see Tiradentes. We decided not to take the famous steam train, Maria Fumaça because it was expensive, and the times weren’t great, so we followed the Estrada Real there. The Estrada Real is an old road built during the Empire so they could transport the gold out of Minas and to the ports, and we found a little waterfall on the road to Tiradentes! Tiradentes turned out to be the most beautifully preserved historic town, it was so stunning, with all the little houses, and, of course, churches all surrounded by hills.

 

Tiradentes was noticeably more turisty than Sao Joao, so maybe coming in the middle of the week would be a good shout, (or maybe just not on Good Friday), but it was worth a visit, I really loved it. On the way back to Belo Horizonte we stopped off at a town called Congonhas that is famous for a church that has 12 statues sculpted by Alejandinho, who was a leper. They’re incredibly beautiful.

 

We stopped off at sunset, and the light was so special. They were also preparing for an Easter procession that was happening later. When we got back to the car it was surrounded by policemen blowing whistles because the procession was passing that way, and no cars were allowed to be there (obviously there were no signs up or anything).

It was definitely a trip worth taking, and we easily did it with only a night’s stop over, but a car is necessary. Happy turisting!

Next weekend is another feriado (long live feriados!), and a big group of us are going to the Serra do Cipó to hike, swim in waterfalls, go abseiling (send help pls), and drink lots of cachaça. Até mais, beijos!