Bus To Ouro Preto : Sat 7th Dec

Two hours sleep. It felt like we barely closed our eyes before we got a quick nod from Bruno that our taxi had arrived. Threw everything into our bags and stumbled out the door into the bright Rio morning light. A fifteen minute journey north to the Rodoviaria (bus station), a short wait in a queue to buy two R$112 one-way tickets to Ouro Preto, departing at 7.30am. Little pieces of paper with them that need filled in. A decision made to write some rules for ourselves in the future, first and foremost being not to go out the night before an early departure ever again.

But it all goes well, and our bus is comfier than the plane we came here in, and it takes as long to get from Rio de Janeiro to Villa Rica de Ouro Preto ('Rich City of Black Gold') as it did to get from Belfast to Newark. No movies though, but sleeping most of the way there helped. The landscape is familiar and soothing, and you feel rewarded for making the effort to get out of the city.

We have definitely left the pleasant coastal climate of Rio. We are much higher here, the air pressure and swollen up our juice cartons and the water was bursting from our water bottles. This is the state of Minas Gerais, and we have travelled such a tiny distance on the map. We have started to get some idea of how huge Brazil actually is.

After getting lost in Ouro Preto, eating our first pay-by-the-kilo lunch (you put it on your plate, they weigh it, you pay accordingly at the end), we jump into a taxi to find the only hostel in town that no-one has heard of. Eventually get here. Find it is a tiny house that sleeps a dozen, and we are sharing with several German boys who seem to work together, and one girl from Sao Paulo. The connection between Germany and South America feels stronger every day. The boys tell us they know towns in southern Brazil where the population only speak German, or at least what they consider to be German. Also the beer in the south is better.

We hear that southern Brazil is markedly different from the middle or northern sections. In the south, there is a much stronger European immigrant influence, lots of Germans and Italians, whereas Rio is more mixed, and north again the African feeling is much stronger. We will scarcely be more northern than this, but already you notice certain counter-balancing forces between African spiritualism and European Catholicism.

Minas Gerais is noted for the quality of its cachaca, a sugar cane spirit similar to rum, and the core ingredient of the classic cocktail Caipirinha (which most agree is virtually hangover free, possibly due to the quality of the spirit, or perhaps the amount of sugar and lime that goes into it). Suffice to say, I have a hankering to try some (or a lot).