Final weekend

Well, the final weekend has came and gone.  I couldn't believe my stay here has gone by so quickly.  I guess you always say that at the end of a trip (except if you are anxious to leave).  The final weekend was spent with a balance of work and play.

Let's start with Saturday.  On Saturday, a few us decided to head on down to the Central Market in downtown BH.  We decided to walk today since the market is only a couple km away.  Yep, I am now using the metric system.  :)  The walk was nice.  I feel like this is the first time I actually got to really see the city of BH, especially outside of the Savassi neighborhood.



The market is very large, almost supercenter-like place which sells everything from food and crafts to live animals.  The thing that shocked me the most was that the market had food vendors and live animal shops right across or next to each other.  Trust me, I stayed far away from either of those places.  Don't need to get food poisoning or some type of bird flu.  The food vendors (not by the animal shops) were amazing, though.  They had everything from nuts, to dried fruit, peppers, cheeses, meats, etc.  It was amazing!  I basically had lunch there by walking around and tasting everything.  Definitely one of the best lunches yet!







The down side is that the market is very repetitive and doesn't have much else.  A great place for food and cooking items.  They had great clay pots which would have been great for my kitchen.  Too bad they weigh a ton and would probably break on the shipment home.

On Sunday, we strolled on down to the Hippie Fair.  The fair only occurs on Sunday mornings from 6am til around 2pm.  We were advised you should get down there before 10am to avoid the crowds.  Of course, we don't get there until just after 10am and immediately realize why we should have gotten there earlier.  The place was packed!  All kinds of vendors with their own tents selling mostly goods for women.  Not really a man's fair.  haha!

They did have all kinds of shoes, jewelry, and clothes (woman and children mostly).  I think all of the ladies bought most of their items here.  They had a ball getting all kinds of shoes and jewelry for really cheap.  I am pretty sure the quality of the product goes along with the price, though.  I was able to find a couple of things for myself.  Found a really cool bead braclet, which I wish I would have bought 20 of since they were only $.50 US a piece.  But oh well!  I also bought a really cool painted carving of Ouro Preto for only R$25.  Not to bad at all!  Sorry, don't really have any pictures.  There really wasn't much to see anyways.

After the fair, we strolled through the park that was close by and relaxed.  It was a great time to reflect and have a more in-depth conversation which we haven't really had a chance to do.  Definitely a nice treat after a busy time at the fair.  Our relaxation period led us to meet up with almost the entire group an eat lunch.   Pretty soon lunch turned into a few drinks which led us to a champagne and cigar bar.  Before we knew it, we all had champagne and cigars in our hands.  Good cigars too!  Cubans.  I think we all felt on top of the world at that moment.  We treated it as a celebration to all our hard work and realized our time together was  running short.  For me, the "Champagne Sunday" was one of the best.  We all seemed to drop our guards for that afternoon and really bond and have a good time.  A good way to start the last week in the BH.

Serra do Cipo and Inhotim

Hello again from the BH!  Sorry that it has been over a week since my last blog post.  As my stay here gets busier, you begin to lose track of time.  I am starting to realize how this is so true!

Anyways, I wanted to provide an update from my last weekend's activities.  On Saturday, we went to the Brazilian National Park, Serra do Cipo.  We had a van arranged to drive us out there.  The park was around 2 hours away from Belo.  The drive there was quite interesting because we ended up going through several small towns.  It really gave you a perspective on life outside of the big city.  As you might expect, the small towns had very little services and the houses were a bit more run down. Very rural, but not quite the same rural as in the US.  It seemed like the residents of the towns were very close with each other, though.  And we totally stood out as gringos.  HAHA.  I will talk a little more about our experience in one of the small town markets in a bit.  Back to the park.

We were a little disappointed the driver didn't even exactly know where to go when we got close.  He had to keep stopping and asking for directions.  But, we got there eventually.  We also learned the park is much, much prettier during a wetter season since most of the beauty is in its waterfalls and streams.  Currently, Brazil is in its dry winter season.  There is still green, but all the vegetation is not as green as it usually is during the wet season.  So, if you are in Brazil during the winter, I would probably suggest you don't spend a day at Serra do Cipo. 

We started exploring the park by visiting the Cachoeira Grande ("Big Waterfalls").  On our route there, we managed to stop at a smaller waterfall where we were able to swim.  I happily jumped in and did a bit of swimming under the waterfall.  It was pretty awesome.  Nothing like swimming in fresh mineral water underneath a small waterfall.  For me, this was one of the two highlights of the trip.  After spending some time swimming, we made our way up to the falls.  Wow!!  It was pretty amazing.  I especially liked the fact that there were no railings or restrictions for where we could go.  I was able to walk out on the rocks pretty much right to the top of the waterfall.  I was also able to climb down to the base to see it up close.  I will post my pictures later, but here is a quick photo just to give you an idea of what it looks like.


Initially, we didn't go swimming.  To be honest, I was a bit scared because of the heavy undercurrent caused by the waterfalls and the debris that can come over.  We had planned to come back to the falls and go swimming, but this never really worked out.  At the waterfalls, we relaxed, ate lunch, and did some hiking to enjoy the area.  It was very peaceful and a fun experience.  This was the second best part of the day.  After the falls, the day trip pretty much downhill.  We hiked back and then drove to see another waterfall.  Unfortunately, the waterfall (which is typically really amazing) was pretty much dried up because of the drought currently going on during the dry season.  So, there wasn't much to see.  We had planned on hiking there, but decided it wasn't worth the effort.  This cut a lot of time out of our day. 

The decision was made to visit the Juquinha statue up at the top of the hill in the park.  We didn't realize the drive was 45 mins to the statue!  This really cut a lot of time out when we all were really just sick of spending time in the van.  The good news is that the view was good and we all got to have fresh coconut water and coconuts from a street vendor selling coconuts.  They were pretty delicious and quite thirst quenching!




But that pretty much summed up Serra do Cipo.  On the way back, we decided to stop at a small town market and grab a beer or two.  We found they also sold Havianas, which are brazilian sandals for really cheap.  We counted and found our group bought 24 pairs of sandals.  I bought 4 pair myself!  They make great presents for only R$12 a pair.  That is $6 US.  Not too shabby!  We laughed about it all the way home.  It was pretty funny watching a bunch of gringos buying loads of sandals.  We pretty much cleaned out the store of sandals.  Just too funny!

On Sunday, we went to one of the most amazing places I have every been too.  This is Inhotim.  It is a botany and art museum that is absolutely amazing and must visit for anyone who loves art.  I can see why they the museum is internationally known.  Here is the museum's URL.  I would highly suggest you check it out!  (http://www.inhotim.org.br/)  The prices of admission was R$28.  Really not a bad deal for all you get to see.  The museum is an outdoor/indoor museum.  Really, it is a huge park with artwork everywhere.  There are 1,500 different species of palm trees including the blue palm from Madagascar, which is extremely rare.  Just about everyone's first time ever seeing one!  In addition to all the palm trees, flowers and other vegetation, they have several outdoor sculptures and galleries located all throughout the grounds.  In the 4 hours we were there, we really only got to see about 50% of the park.  We all wish we had another day we could go back because it was that amazing. 

Here is a picture of the grounds.  I will post more of my personal photos in my next post.



This was my favorite outdoor sculpture by far.  I think because it is so organic and really tricks your eye.  I bet you would never guess the tree floating in the air is made out of bronze.  You really can't tell until you are right up next to it!



This was a very interesting piece as well because it dealt with a person's comfort level, conformity, and boundaries or rules one follows in their own culture.  As you can see the whole floor is filled with broken glass.  The exhibit invites you to go in and walk around on the broken glass if you have regular shoes on.  The exhibit is really an experiment.  It tests you to see what your comfort level is of walking on the glass, how far and long will you walk around, and where will you go.  In the exhibit, there are several boundaries.  You can walk anywhere around in the exhibit, but they have found most people don't walk for a very long time or don't walk to the center where the big ball of saran wrap is.  Pretty interesting!



Here is another picture on the landscaping design as well.  A very beautiful and peaceful place to enjoy your day.  Definitely one of the biggest highlights of my trip!  I highly recommend you plan a trip to visit for a few days at some point if you are an art lover.  Simply amazing!