Ouro Preto, Tiradentes, and on to Rio

After Serra do Cippo and stopping to see the mining museum we went to a historical gold minning hub of Brazil, Ouro Preto. Our airbnb was historical with lots of character, and only street parking was available. I asked them ahead of time if finding 2 parking spots would be difficult, which they assured me should not be a problem. When we got there we realized the whole town was very hilly, and that the street we were on was a VERY steep hill. Luckily there was a pull out that was flat for our cars and from there we decided to walk everywhere. Luckily there was everything we wanted in walking distace. And Ouro Preto is lovely. It's colonial history was maintained in beautiful cobblestone streets and colorful trims on all the houses and shops. There was also a plethora of churches and gold mines to visit. So our first night we decided to just walk to the town square and eat at a local pizzaria.

The next day we decided to visit a gold mine. So we walked over to Mina do Palacio Velho, where we donned hard hats and took a tour. We were sad to hear the history of slavery that ran these mines. Very hard labor, where they often used children. The mines were very impressive when considering that they were hand dug and it was solid rock. The gold was very small and only found as the rock was ground down to sand and then the sand panned to seperate the gold sand. One fifth of the gold was sent to Portugal as a tax. After the tour we headed over to see the memorial to Chico Rei, who. according to oral tradition, was a African king who eventually snuck out enough gold to buy his son's freedom and then his own. Later buying a gold mine to help buy the freedom of other slaves.

After the gold mine we went to lunch and explored the city and some of it's beautiful churches and neighborhoods. At Sao Fransisco de Assis, we ran into an artist who was paingint tiles with his finger and a credit card. He gave us all a demonstration and painted a portrait of us and our friends. It was really fun for all of us to see and participate.

After the churches we visited a stone work craft fair and bought a beautiful box and the kids found some stone animals. And then we went to Museu da Inconfidencia in Tiradentes Square. The museum was a memorial to all the people who fought in a revolution against Portugal. They were unsuccesful and many were killed or exiled to Mozambique, but they are revered as important to Brazil's independence. The most famous being Tiradentes, a dentist who was an influential leader in the revolution. The museum was originally built as the town hall and jail, but over time became a penetentiary. It was used as a prison until they made it a museum in 1936, when they rescued the remains of many of the leaders of the revolution from Mozambique. Their remains are now kept in a memorial within the museum along with many artifacts from that time. It was interesting to learn some of Brazil's history both with slavery and with it's revolution from Portugal. After the museum we headed home to eat cheese bread and bacon and relax.

The next day we seperated from the Yates, who were visiting areas from Isaac's mission, and went our own way to visit Tiradentes. We first stopped in a more modern gold mine, Mina do Passagem. We took a truly terifying cart ride down into the mine (I was so scared the cable would break and we would go flying down the hill to crash at the bottom) and then took a tour of the much larger mine. Grant loved pointing to all the flakes in the rock that he suspected were gold.

In the afternoon we drove through beautiful countryside and we kept seeing huge Termite mounds everywhere. When we first made it to Tiradentes we thought was a smaller less impressive Ouro Preto. But after walking around the historic area we were impressed with the scenic mountains and colorful homes an shops. Much different than Ouro Preto. We also visited an old fountain, visited a beautiful church, veiwed the mountains, and stopped for yummy gelato in the town square.

We were staying in Sao Joao Del Rei, another historical town nearby, but we were running really late (it was almost sunset), and we thought we would just pick up dinner and have to skip seeing the historic center. So we put a Bob's Burgers that was close to our airbnb into our GPS and headed there. We were super pleased to realize that it was located on a square with a beautiful historic church. So we ate burgers there while enjoying the historic buildings of Sao Joao Del Rei. And the sunset was beautiful. We were woken up by beautiful, but very loud parrots in the morning.

The next day we drove off on our way to Rio de Janeiro. We made a couple stops along the way. First stop was Tres Rios, a city where Jake had served during his mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I was driving and was having such a hard time with the fact that there were no stop or yeild sign at the intersections so it felt crazy. But Jake showed us where the church was and we drove along the river where he often walked and taught people.

Our next stop was Petropolis, which is a high mountain town outside of Rio. We saw Jake's old apartment and drove by the city center. The views as we drove out were beautiful although it was too foggy to see all the way to Rio. We bought some of the little banana's from a street vendor and snacked on them as we drove into Nova Iguacu.

We spent the afternoon catching up with some friend's of Jake. We had a lot of fun and even got to celebrate Favia's birthday with her. They made a huge birthday cake, we sang, and loved hearing all the stories from Jake's mission.

That night we drove into Copacabana and rejoined with the Yates.