Ouro Preto (1-2/Nov/06)

Paraty, Brazil

Ouro Preto was a big gold & diamonds mining town at one point, which is why it is crammed with beautiful churches, colonial architecture, and plenty of art. Now the gold has all but run out they can turn to that to bring in tourists, which explains why we went here. It is a beautiful town in the hills and we spent the entire day walking the cobbled streets in and out of churches looking at the various masterpieces of Alehandrinho and others. I also popped into a disused mine which had belonged to a cooperative of ex-slaves; a whole tribe and its chief were captured in Africa and sold as slaves, but slowly the chief saved up enough money to buy his liberty. He then bought his son, and between the two they liberated the entire tribe and finally bought the mine.

The next day we went to a nearby (relatively speaking) town, Congohas, to see Alehandrinho's masterpiece at the Basilica de Matosinhos, a series of amazing life-size wood carvings of various scenes from the Passion of Christ, together with some stone sculptures of various Old Testament Prophets (these were really cool, they looked like something out of the Lord of the Rings). Definitely worth the trip.