Intimidated by the moto-crossers and their sotries we hit the road very early that day to have more time to get lost and still make it to Lagoa Dourada. A guy from the gas station and some truckers gave us some last advises and following the map of the moto-crossers we set off in direction to São João del Rei.
Surprise, surprise - when following the drawing we turned left - there was a signpost of the Estrada Real! My theory that at 80km/h and covered in a cloud of dusts it is hard to see an earth-coloured signpost seemed to make sense. A second singpost followed, a third one...
Without getting lost we made it to Casa Grande.
About half an hour from Casa Grande we stopped to let some trucks pass and eat some fruit (you better hide and let them pass if you don´t feel like swallowing a bucket full of Brazilian dust!). An old man who had bought some cookies in the next village and was on his way home stopped to chat with us. He asked where we are from and said that Rio must be really ´lindo´, he had seen it on tv. He had never been there and would love to see the beaches but crime and violence scared him. Flavio who still believes that Rio is not more dangerous than any other place asked him if there was no crime in Minas. Oh yes, there is, the old man said, in Casa Grande there is! Three years ago they stole a truck full of corn and sold it in São Paulo. They left the truck and escaped. And have never been found. And it was a really pretty truck, he added, ´muito lindo´... Unfortunately we changed the subject and I never got to ask Flavio if the theft of a corn truck could keep up with the drug wars in Rio to sustain his theory.
The only thing ´grande´ about Casa Grande is its name. It has a main road, a post office, a school, a corner storne... and a restaurant. The restaurant has rice, beans and meat - or for those really strange people who refuse to eat meat, eggs ;-) We were really hungry so we didn´t really care. And the homemade sweets definately made up for the simple menu. Nott o forget the great company! A sweet old man joined us for dinner. He told us that he was 75 years old and widower. He told this a couple of times and everytime he raised his hat to show us his full hair. It seemed that he hasn´t lost a single hair since his twenties - must be the fresh air in Casa Grande or the homemade sweets! I would have loved to chat with him some more, especially since he called me ´muito linda´, but unfortunately he hasn´t had as much luck with his teeth as with his hair (this supports the sweets theory) and it was impossible to understand more than his age and his being a widower.
Without getting lost, not even once, we made it to Lagoa Dourada. We were lucky to find a nice and cheap pousada - the ´Pousada dos Vertentes´, located in a 250 old mansion right across the church. It is run my lovely Dona Aidé and her family. The price of R$25 for the two of us included a great (but very sweet!) breakfast and Dona Aidé did everything to make us feel at home. She was one of the few people we met who knew exactly were the Estrada Real was, how to find the signposts and were we would have to expect some ´subidas´ or ´descidas´.
Lagoa Dourada is famous for its ´rocambole´, a biscuit roll with different fillings - chocolate, caramel, nuts.... We had read about it in our guide book and it is hard to miss it - every second building houses a bakery serving rocambole. Some of them even roll them fresh for you! We tried about 3 different fillings - all of them delicious! Unfortunately eating rocambole is the only thing you can do in Lagoa Dourada so after stuffing ourselves with rocambole we went back to our pousada, watched tv with our lovely hosts and went to bed pretty early.
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