Ouro Preto

We arrived in Ouro Prety early in the morning, well rested and keen to assemble our bikes and expore the city!

We soon found out that the gold mines having been closed long ago, the city and its enterprising inhabitants were looking for new mines to exploit - the walking and talking ones. So unlike in the 17th century our arrival in Ouro Preto didn´t fill our bags with gold but ate a hole in our travel budget - be it churches, musea, mines - there is an entry fee for everything and usually higher than the ones in Rio. And end of May, beginning June being the low season an approximately 3-4 tourist guides per (tourist) capita made it quite strenious to visit the lovely historic city and gold ornated churches of Ouro Preto. One of them even followed us to lunch and seemed to appear out of nowhere in every church we visited. We gave in and he turned out to be a walking talking biography of Aleijadinho.

We also visited the `Jeje´ gold mine. Compared to other mines this one has a high ceiling and is very light, at least at the entrance, which makes the visit a bit less scary. The guide showed us a deep and very steep tunnel explaining that it had been abandoned because too many slaves fell on the steep climb and died. Considering the relative high price of a slave during that time the gold in this tunnel therefore wasn´t considered lucrative! Having seen the barrock churches, overloaded by gold just half an hour before we started wondering what kind of religion this is that adorns its churches with a material causing so much human suffering!?

After a day full of culture and history we went back to the ´Pousada dos Bandeirantes´ to have a good rest before starting our adventure the next day!