Cachoeiras in Carrancas

We had a holiday in the beginning of this week to commemorate the proclamation of the Brazilian republic. I celebrated this by going out to the countryside to a place called Carrancas. The town is really small and there is not much to see in the centre. There are, however, a lot of beautiful cachoeiras around. Cachoeira is the Portuguese word for waterfall. I have included a lot of pictures below, but there was still a lot more to see.

If water flows over stone for a long time, it can etch holes in the stone. Here a heart shaped hole had been formed.

I saw one of the biggest wild spiders I have ever seen. The spider in the picture below is the size of my whole hand!

In one place the water had been smoothing out the stone for a long time and thus created a natural slide. The slide was incredibly smooth and it was possible to pick up a quite high speed before splashing into a natural pool.

Here follows a few pictures of one of my favourite waterfalls in Carrancas. It is called Zilda's waterfall. It's not the biggest, highest or broadest fall, but it had a bit of everything. And while roads often had been made to the bigger waterfalls, you had to go through the forest for a while to reach this one. I found a small path that lead into the forest and decided to follow it without knowing where I would end up. After walking for a while in (relatively) boring nature, I ended up next to this waterfall. Along the way I found a little dog, which followed me to the waterfall. I never found its owner, but it disappeared while I was enjoying the waterfall and the pool below it.

Just as there was a storm coming in, we found a little pub in the middle of nowhere, so we decided to stay there for a while.

Someone brought a guitar to the cachoeira and left it in a tree while he went for a little swim. I thought it looked really nice with the bag hanging in the tree over the flip flops and with the guitar high up in the tree.

Buses

There are a few seats reserved for old people, pregnant women, people with small children and for people with disabilities. All this is very normal, but on the buses here, these seats are also reserved for obese people, see the picture below. I have never seen this before.

Mariana

The Portuguese and the British built railroads to transport the gold (and other minerals) in this area. Many of these railroads are since long abandoned, and Brazil now has a very small network of railroads. Brazil would have had significantly more railroads if the big police in the north wouldn't have interfered in order to establish a huge market for cars.
There is still an old train running from Ouro Preto to Mariana, which is a neighbouring town. The view from the train during this ride is spectacular.

I went into one of the old mines between Ouro Preto and Mariana. You enter the mine using an old small train car, which is connected to an engine with a loong rope. This slowly lowers you into the mine and afterwards pulls you up again. The mine is not active anymore and many of the tunnels have been filled with water. The water is very clear, since nothing can live there. Sometimes people go diving in the water and the visibility is supposed to be up to 50 m.

Entrance to the mine.

Entrance to the diving area.

Ouro Preto

I have now visited a few more places here in the state Minas Gerais in Brazil. First out is Ouro Preto, which means black gold. The city was a focal point during the gold rush in Brazil, and a high percentage of the gold found in the world during the 17th and 18th centuries, was found here. An early Brazilian attempt to gain independence from the Portuguese started here. It basically started due to that the Brazilians couldn't or didn't want to keep paying huge taxes on the gold to the Portuguese. However, in the end the attempt failed and the leader was hanged.

I also enjoyed a caipirinha in the central square of the city.

Countdown

The countdown has begun. It is now 952 days left before the world cup begins. The stadiums are, however, far from being completed. Some of them should also be finished before the confederations cup, which is long before the world cup. Hopefully it will be fine, but we'll see. The Brazilian mentality is sometimes a bit too relaxed, but most of the time it still works.

German treasure

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this in a shop today. Most of the beer they sell here is also brewed here, and let's say that it's not always of a very high quality. It's fine as long as you drink the beer cold, which you want most of the time anyway, but if it gets warm it quickly loses its taste. This beer is brewed in a nice little place in Bamberg in Germany, and it tastes much better there than from a bottle half the world away. Which was one of the reasons that I didn't buy it. The other reason is visible at the bottom of the picture: the price. 20 reais! That is almost £8 or 80 SEK!

View of Belo Horizonte

I went to a place with a view of a small part of Belo Horizonte today. The city is really big, so it's difficult to get a nice overview, but there are a looot of these high buildings as you can see in the middle of the picture below. There are also quite a lot of favelas, like the small one you can see on the right in the pictures below.

The picture below is zoomed in from the one above. Here you can see two of the sides of Brazil: the poor favelas and the richer parts.

The university

As you all know, it's never really cold here in Brazil. Some Brazilians might claim that it gets cold in their winters, but they don't know what they are talking about. OK, in the very south it can go down to about zero degrees, but here it never gets anywhere close to those temperatures (that must feel nice to read at this time of year in Europe ;)). This is reflected in the buildings. The buildings here in the campus are all very open. See the pictures below, where you can see that the corridors are open - as in no windows or walls - which works perfectly since they don't have to shield against any cold. I'm also becoming so used to palm trees that I barely see them anymore.

There are a few places in the physics department where they have blackboards, outdoors! They are under the roof, but it is still pretty cool, see below.

 This is the view from my office. There is a small balcony...

... and this is the view when I'm lying in the hammock...