Easter Adventures

Brazil has abundant holidays, and I took full advantage of Pascoa (Easter) to travel to Belo Horizonte (BH), a city further towards the interior of Brazil, in the state of Minas Gerais. A good friend of mine, Pedro, put me up in his apartment for four days and we explored new parts of the city every day.

The photo above is from the top of the "cerra" (range of large hills) to the south of BH, were I hiked on my last day. You can see almost the entire city from this vanatge, all the buildings stretching way off into the distance are part of BH. The closest neighborhood with the large fancy houses, red roofs and swimming pools is Mangabeiras, a "bairro nobre," or "noble neighborhood" which is the name they use for the wealthy regions of the city. BH is a conglomeration of noble, middle class, and a few poor neighborhoods, with several favelas scattered about, usually on hill slopes. But all the neighborhoods are unified by a well-organized system of roads and grids. Clearly the city planners knew what they were doing. All the north-south and east-west roads serve as local access to shops and apartments, while the diagonal roads are the highways. The city is foot on the foothills of the cerra, and therefore walking from north to south is a steady upward climb. Some of the steep streets with large buildings looming overhead reminded me of Seattle.

Above is a picture of the Lagoa de Pampulha. Pedro and I walked around the whole thing, which is pretty large (18km walk to get around it). In the distance of this shot you can see two stadiums. Both are being renovated now, the closer is an indoor soccer stadium, the other on the right is the soccer stadium that will be used for some of the preliminary games for the World Cup in 2014.

Climbed a tree to get a picture over the fence of the World Cup stadium being renovated. I wanted to go explore it but Pedro explained a lot about guards and video cameras and trouble so we kept walking.

 Governer's palace. Wouldn't mind staying there.

 

More or less the view from the Governer´s palace. Apparently he only stays here part of the year anyway, the rest summer he spends in his mansion up in Mangabeiras. Maybe he will pay me to house sit for him. 

 

 My friend Pedro in front on an impressive tree next to the lake. I thought it was cool that the tree had roots shooting out of its trunk and growing down into the ground.

 Clouds in the lake and capybaras in the mud.

 Bird symmetry.

Unfortunately there was a lot of trash in the lake, and when we passed downwind of it the stench was foul... It's a shame such a place of natural beuaty is maintained better. Apparently there are crocodiles in the lake, but I can't imagine how they would survive. The only animals I saw were birds, dead fish, and capybaras. Maybe they eat the capybaras.



I made two journeys up the cerra, the first with Pedro, the second alone. On the other side of the mountains I found a hidden paradise. I was genuinely shocked that such beauty could be so close to a huge metropolitan sprawl and not be tainted. But from the ruggedness of the trails I discovered I think few people know of its existence and fewer still are willing to make the journey. But what I found was worth every effort.

 

 

The hidden lake in all its glory. The lake formed as a result of water filling in an old mine site. They excavated a tremendous amount of iron ore here, and the pit has since filled with water. I think it is very very deep.

 

 

The route down the other side of the cerra, dropping down into the mine. The sides were too steep to hike but we found a storm-drain canals with a series of concrete drops that was climbable. This route took us directly to the lake.

Pedro demonstrating great scaling skills. Getting up and down some of the steps was a bit tricky. This particular step (above) was a beast. Some other explorers before us had scratched their names above this step, but we found no names further down. It seemed very few jumped down it for fear of not being able to get back out. Rock climbing skills came in handy when I had to get out the second time without Pedro's help.

 The rocks around the mine were amazing, chock full of iron ore and feldspar (I think) and super shiny. Hard to resist playing with shiny rocks so they were a major distraction as I was hiking around.

 Finally nearing the summit of the highest point on the cerra.

 Views from the top. The line of darker green signifying denser plants on the left marks where the drainage canal was. That's where we descended and ascended.

 Finally reaching the water.

Private swimming pool. The water was clean and cool, perfect for swimming around and hanging out. One would be hard pressed to find any of the nobles in Mangabeiras with a setup this plush. Although for some reason as I swam around, alone in the giant lake, I had this sense that there was some giant lake monster lurking in the depths below me, waiting to snatch me by the leg and pull me under. Kind of unsettling.

I imagine the monster of the lake looks something like this street art near Pedro's apartment.

Belo Horizonte was awesome, I enjoyed my free time immensely. I could really get used to Brazil's system of frequent holidays... Now its time to get back to work here in the lab. More to come soon on developements in the lab.