Belo Horizonte

8th Sept - Arrived about 6.30 am and got a taxi to the hostel, couldn't get anyone to open up at first but eventually got in!!! Settled ourselves in the dorm and said hello to the two girls who were already there - they hadn't liked it very much and were going on to Ouro Preto.  We went back into the town it was very built up with high rises and lots of traffic. We walked around and found the central market which was a warren of all kinds of stalls you could easily get lost in it.  There was a minerology museum with some fantastic stones, amethyst quartz and all the rest, beautiful.

9th Sept - Took a day trip to Ouro Preto (2 hours on the bus).  It was a very nice and hilly place, at last no high rises, only thing was there was a motocross meeting there and so the main square was taken up with bikes and muddy bikers.

Visited the main museum in the area and it was quite interesting to read and see everything that went on in this little town, it was the centre of the Gold rush in Brazil and gave Portugal a lot of it's wealth.  Unfortunately didn't get the chance to go down the mine, but the shops sold lots of different rocks and stones really cheaply, just couldn't carry them all round the world and the postage isn't cheap.

Altogether this place was more what I expected Brazil to be like, cobbled streets and very hilly, with lots of craft shops.