The Gold Trail: Ouro Preto

Traveling the 6 hours from Petropolis to Belo Horizonte (Beautiful Horizon) was a pleasant enough experience. All bus trips in Brazil are best reserved using the online website http://www.buscaonibus.com.br. We booked our tickets, taxied to the rodoviaria (bus station), and on the morning of the 20th February we set off North through the mountains to the state of Minas Gerais (General Mines). Our journey was undertaken in relative comfort, with A/C blasting and reclining chairs – much improved on the arduous and dangerous journeys that would have been made at the height of the Gold Rush in the 17th to 19th Centuries.

Our first hostel was a washout – our reserved room had been given away, there were bugs everywhere, the guy in charge was drunk and there was a massive turd in the toilet. Gross. We moved on to a better central hotel (Hotel Amazonas Palace) that had no English speaking staff whatsoever. It had great room service though, once you could make yourself understood, and was good value for money being so central in Brazil’s third largest city.

The locals call Belo Horizonte, ‘Beagá’, which is phonetically how you pronounce the acronym BH in Portuguese. We were just using BH as a base to visit two other major sites along the Gold Trail. One was the Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, or Inhotim: Center for Contemporary Art. The other was the old capital of Minas Gerais called Ouro Preto (Black Gold). I recommend anyone travelling to BH and using it as a base to buy the ongoing tickets to both Inhotim and Ouro Preto once they arrive in the bus station – it makes life a bit easier knowing that you have seats booked on the earlier buses, rather than waiting to do it online later.

Our day trip on the 21st February to Ouro Preto was excellent. Renamed from Vila Rica (rich town), this is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is here that Brazil’s Golden Age in the 17th and 18th Century began when bandeirantes (‘followers of the banner’); a group of adventurers who travelled the jungles of Brazil enslaving the native populations and searching for minerals, struck gold in 1690 whilst searching for water. The fortunes made were vast, most of it flowing back to Portugal, and eventually to England to pay off Portugal’s war debts. The rush was on, and over 400,000 Portuguese migrated to the area from other parts of Brazil and Europe, along with the importation of half a million African slaves who were used to mine gold and eventually diamonds. Ouro Preto became the most populated city in colonial Brazil for a time, and was the state capital of Minas Gerais from 1720 to 1897 until BH took its place.

We decided our first port of call was to visit one of the old mines of Ouro Preto, called Mina da Passagem, or Mine Passage. We negotiated with the taxi driver who would drive the 7km there, wait, and drive us back –$25US was as low as he would go, serving to remind us that the Gold Rush days were over, and now tourism is pretty much the largest industry here now.

The mine costs a few Reals to enter, and the first thing we saw was a cable running into the ground which appeared to be screaming as a pulley was winding it up. The electric pulley and cranks seemed to be from another time, but before we could wonder too much about what was going on, a trolley arrived that takes you down a steep incline deep into the mine (120 meters down along a 315 meter long track).

The descent into the darkness was a little scary at first, but it was great fun! It was certainly a lot cooler down in the mine too. The guide who took us down did not speak English, but luckily for us, the Brazilian tourist couple you can see in the video translated some of the more salient details, including that the underground lake is still explored by tourist divers although he water contains lethal quantities of arsenic, this mine yielded up 35 tons of gold, and we were shown how the gold is for in the vein of the quartz rock which is were it is extracted. I’m sure I saw a few bats down there too…

Once we were pulled up to the surface (just as much fun as going down), we were shown by the guide how they used to pan for gold by bringing up all the mucky sludge from the mine in pipes, and would sift through it to get little specs of gold. This process took ages for little reward, but if you imagine how many slaves they had working at the mine, it is no wonder all that effort stacked up to so many tons of gold.

We taxied back after checking out the little mine museum adjoining its inevitable gift shop, and we came to Praça Tiradentes (Tiradentes Square).

It cannot be underestimated how important Ouro Preto was to the Portuguese at this time. The gold and diamonds found in this area created such a vast fortune that Brazil was considered more important than any other colony, such as those in Africa, Goa or Macau. Over the almost two centuries that followed before the mines dried up, Ouro Preto became a hotbed of European intelligentsia and artistry. There was a baroque revival which is evidenced in the architecture today. Indeed, any new buildings in Ouro Preto have to be built in accordance with the current colonial style.

Walking around Ouro Preto was more difficult even than walking around Paraty. Cobbled and uneven streets covered huge hills. We tried to make sure we were not going up too many steep slopes; but with no elevation measurements marked on the tourist maps, our legs got tired pretty quickly. We came across the Casa de Contos or House of Counting which was the main tax collection point for colonial Portugal in Ouro Preto. It became a prison for the Inconfidentes; the group who were attempting to break Minas Gerais away from Portugal’s rule. They were all imprisoned including the ringleader, Tiradentes, who was found guilty of treason and hung in Rio de Janeiro – his body parts placed as a warning to other plotters along the road between Ouro Preto and Rio.

No pictures allowed there though, but we did find the basement which contained many disturbing objects, hundreds of years old, used to keep the slaves in line. Whips, metal beating sticks, stocks, metal cuffs designed to induce stress positions, etc. A reminder of the massive human cost it took to make the old world rich.

At the top of a particularly wicked hill was the mouthful Museu de Ciencia y Tecnica de Escola de Minas Gerias de Federal Universidade de Ouro Preto (Museum of Science and Technique of the School of Mines of the Federal University of Ouro Preto). Founded in 1876 by a French scientist, the large building is part museum, part school. It holds over 30,000 items from around the globe – including some interesting skeletons that include a jaguar and a sloth, and a room full of every gem and precious stone that you can imagine – including ones that you can’t. There are many students here – and it looks like a lot of them have to pull guard duty. This makes a nice change from the usual Brazilian museum guard who will follow you around furtively, perhaps imagining that they are some sort of James Bond character, as if you are about to stuff the large paintings or heavy objects into your pockets (you normally have to check your bag – although mercifully they haven’t realized another opportunity to shaft you out of any money for this yet). Maybe this is because even the oldest most important of Brazilian historical objects you come across are often not behind any protective casing or display – but free to the touch. I don’t think many of the museum can afford the casing – and if this is true, the guards pay must be abysmal.

Also in this museum was a room full of students experiments showcasing the different physical properties and mathematical principles such as perpetual motion, gravity and electricity. These scientific experiments were interactive. You could play with them and they would explain why each object behaved as it did. For example there was a small dolls house with various switches that turned on the various electrical appliances in the house. There was a counter next to the house that showed the amount of electricity being used. Of course, the electric shower was a culprit of massive electricity usage, so this science project now served to educate the public about conservation in the museum!

Another great feature of this museum were the meteorites on display. They were from all over the world and were all types and shapes imaginable. Rock, metal, long, flat, ball-shaped and large; they came from Mexico, Brazil, Russia and even Asia. It all made climbing the hill well worthwhile!

The next stop was the Museu de Inconfidencia, which was the memorial to Tiradentes and his fellow anti-colonial conspirators. Tiradentes, or ‘tooth puller’, was Joaquim Jose da Silva. A dentist by trade, he was a nobleman who tried along with his fellow conspirators to foster republican anti-monarchist ideals amongst the people. He was caught and held for 3 years before being executed. Many Inconfidentes were exiled to the African colonies as punishment. We also found out here, that Tiradentes’ head was displayed in the town square after his execution, but it disappeared and its whereabouts has become a Brazilian mystery.

There was also a room dedicated to the Brazil’s general past here, called the Empire room. This contained the first printing presses were used to print newspapers and features on Brazil all designed to entice people from the Old World. They also have clothing, cookery ware and various oratories.

An oratory is an object of devotion, often depicting saints, which were used as portable religious sacred objects to protect and guide the carrier. The first hip to arrive in Brazil in 1500 from Portugal carried an oratory of Nossa Senhora da Esperanca (Our Lady of Hope) in its hold. This began a tradition that carried on throughout the colonial and Imperial periods of Brazil – all the way throughout the Gold Rush.

We visited the Museu do Oratorio (Oratory Museum) which was inaugurated in 1998. The oratories were mostly built by unskilled people and took many different shapes and forms. Many look like small cabinets in which the figures of saints are seen. They would be used as a shrine in a household corner, or taken by travellers on a long trip. Some were large enough that priests would use them as a sort of portable sacrament kit to perform baptisms or hear confessions, etc. Have oratory, will travel. The museum is fascinating and has full explanations in English for each section – definitely worth a visit.

The last place we visited was the Casa de Opera Teatro Municipal, which is the oldest and longest running theatre in the Americas. In need of some serious restoration now, this cute little theatre is still looking good however. We were lucky to be treated to a practice performance by a visiting Austrian pianist playing everything from Chopin to Beethoven. The acoustics were amazing in the theatre – thanks mostly to a horrid looking new ceiling, placed there for that purpose. The proud guide who worked at the theatre was not very happy with this and indicated a preference for the old wooden ceiling. We did notice that wherever you sat in this theatre, you had a perfect view of the stage. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore!

Finishing our visit with a quick trip around a little local craft market and with some food we left Ouro Preto with our imagination stirred of older times in Brazil. They must have had harder lives back then, but surely the adventure those early pioneers embarked upon must have made their blood flow.