If it wasn’t for the palm trees, this could be Tuscany. Purely theoretically of course – I ‘ve never actually been to Tuscany. A welcome clean breath of air after the honkin, bustling and big town shenanigans of Rio, Ouro Preto is a small town wedged into a valley not big enough for any kind of town at all. Cobbled streets wind up and down unlikely inclines – wise locals get around mainly on scooters while tourists puff and wheeze their way between the 13 churches, museums and mines dedicated to the towns two main boasts – gold, and the sculptor of church interiors Aleijadinho, the ‘little cripple’ as he became after he contracted what was probably leprosy. The huge number of churches for the miniscule population was not only a show of wealth in the uber ornate baroque interiors, gilded throughout in gold. No, this was a mining town and mining was a dangerous profession – the more churches they build, the more protection they could be afforded from god against tragic accidents.
Apart from the scooters, this town has a extraordinarily high proportion of tired old Volkswagen beetles that to this day I can’t explain. Answers on a postcard please. They did seem to be highly proficient at getting up those hills, even if they were rather noisy about it.
Which brings me almost to my hostel - O sorriso do lagarto (the smile of the lizard. no I don't know why...). First I had to get there from the bus station. The overnight bus from Rio spat us out at about 5.30am, and according to google maps (good ol google maps) it was just a 12 min walk from the bus station. Right down here, first left, a quick dog leg to carry on in the same direction, then left for a hundred metres or so. How the hostel owner laughed when I showed him this map. What looked like the shortest way involved two particularly precarious, but luckily downhill, slopes, that I inched my way down, to the delight of the locals who looked on as they made their ways to work, knowing that with the weight of all my bags, the slightest slip could deliver me unceremoniously rolling and sliding to the bottom without any hesitation. I still allowed myself to be a little smug though, when I arrived at the same time as a French couple who’d been on the same bus but paid 10 Reais (just over £3) to cab it there.
The Sorriso Lagarto hostel was the strangest I’d seen so far – the owner was lovely, really helpful and friendly, and taught me some good salsa rhythms. But the building itself? I could never quite get used to our dorm being on the first floor (up a small spiral staircase), and the bathrooms being either straight off the dining room or in the basement (and several of those wet rooms without a separate shower cubicle so you can’t get changed in there) where the lockers also were. Why would I want my locker to be 2 floors away from my bed? And why should I have to walk past the night guard in my nightie just to go the loo in the middle of the night? The latter I put up with, but the former was too much. I resorted to locking valuable in my rucksack and then locking the rucksack to the bed.
The churches were pretty, the mines were interesting, but not as impressive as some of the ones in the UK, but what really got me was that without my knowing, I’d managed to arrive right at the beginning of the Ouro Preto Jazz festival. I did not fly thousands of miles to get away from LJF only to be confronted by a bill of our good friends Madeline Peyroux, Lionel Loueke and Richard Galliano among others. I stayed to watch the first night – Lionel playing with some trumpeter and his small band. I forget the name. The title piece ‘After the big rain’ was interesting and Lionel had some good bits in there, but someone needed to tell them that this audience may be jazz fans, but inside they’re still Brazilians, and at 10pm on a Friday night they want to be DANCING. These introspective 10 minute noodly solos that build atmosphere or some such nonsense may work in pizza express but they cut no mustard on an open air stage on a balmy Friday evening.
After 3 days I was done with history and ready to get back to the coast, to some more backpackers, and some better supermarkets. Saturday morning I packed and set off for Salvador.
Diary of a bus journey – Sunday and Monday 19 and 20 September
As much as Washington (the owner of the Ouro Preto hostel) and others had warned me off this journey and insisted I’d be better off flying, as much as anything else I was curious about the experience. What on earth do people DO with themselves for all those hours, pray tell?
Purely in the interest of investigation and your amusement, I decided to find out, and, inspired by Serious’s new timesheets, here’s my timesheet for the journey....
Origin – Ouro Preto
Destination – Salvador
Route – OP- Belo Horizonte (2 hours). Belo Horizonte- Salvador (22 hours)
And they’re off
Saturday 19 September
1025 - Having taken my time to get as clean as one can possibly get in one sitting, I leave the hostel to walk 15mins to the bus station in Ouro Preto, intending to get the 11.30 bus. Discover there’s actually an 11am bus and buy a ticket for that instead. Brazilian bus tickets can only frustratingly be bought at the start of each leg, or an approved local travel agent, so I can’t buy my BH- Salvador ticket until I get to BH. Hence getting there at lunchtime when I know the bus doesn’t leave until 7pm.
1100 – bus leaves for BH and I spend my time fretting about what I do if tonight’s bus is already full. I need to stop said fretting- I have my contingency plan ready, so I don’t need to worry about putting it into action until whatever happens happens. Nothing I can do about it now. Have set myself the mission of finding out what the locals do with themselves when they’re trapped on a bus/in a bus station for nearly 30 hours (count em)
1105 – mission progress: not going well. I have been assigned a seat right at the front of the bus so I can’t see anyone else. I think from previous short-hauls, that sleeping, staring into space, and chatting to neighbour (if applicable – there’s oddly very little talking to strangers on buses here) are the order of the day. And in that order.
Sleeping sounds good to me – the hostel in OP was on a main road next to a petrol station and on a hill, so most hours of the day and night there was some kind of revving of tired engines, beeping of tyre pressure gauges, and I don’t know where that party last night came from, but yep, that was annoying too...
1105-1120 – wrote in my journal
1120-1200 – dozed
1200-1245 – stared out the window as the bus crawled through the outskirts of BH
1245 – arrive BH. Find ticket hall and the office for the company I need
1300 – buy bus ticket. Thank goodness I am so early. The bus is already half full and it looks like I’m sat next to someone. Drat. Was hoping for this long stretch to have a double to myself.
1300-1315 – pray that whoever will be next to me is not fat/smelly/snoring
1315-1330 – cruise the concourse checking out the shops and snack bars on offer, struggle to fit me and my luggage through the turnstile to the loo, and then decide I need a sit down
1330-1345 – Peruse guide book, scribble in journal, and debate leaving rucksack in a locker and venturing out of the bus station for lunch at a restaurant recommended by guide book. Think that would be sensible – 6 hours sitting in the same bus station is quite a long time...
1345 – hang around outside the left luggage lockers until I figure out how it works, pay my R$6 and head out into the scorching heat of the Brazilian afternoon
1345-1445 – wander around trying to find the recommended restaurant, passing and dismissing many reasonable alternatives on the way. Giving up, I attempt to retrace my steps, but get hopelessly lost,although I do bump into a German couple who’d been in the same hostel as me in Ouro Preto.
1445 – finally refind a reasonable looking per kilo restaurant and sneak in a wholesome looking plateful just before they close. Portion judgement starting to improve. But only slightly.
1515 – resume wandering and find an atm that a) accepts visa and b) doesn’t levy a hefty charge of its own on top of my banks own miserly scroungings. Sit down in the shade to read about Salvador. Top Traveller tip – if you need shoes, BH is the place. I saw more Calçado shops than anything else while milling aroud. Glad I’m not staying here though. The one place that looks interesting to visit (the municipal park with accompanying art galleries) was deemed by the guide book to be ‘not safe to go alone’ Big raspberry to BH for that. I came, I saw, I comida-ed per kilo. That will suffice.
1630 – looks like it’s starting to rain and a dirty old man has decided to come and sleep in my bench, so I set off to find a supermarket to stock up on cheap water (22 hours! That’s, like, a whole reservoir), but find only a drugstore (hello? Big city! Not even one little supermarket or convenience store?). Not cheap, but cheaper, I console myself, than it would be at the bus station.
1645 – back in bus station and write up timesheet for the afternoon
1655 – finish writing timesheet. Only 2 hours to go!! By gum its hot in BH today – about 35 in the shade. I smell really bad already and won’t see a shower for another 24 hours. Yay. Maybe it’s not me who needs to worry about my seat neighbour. Maybe it’s the other way around...
1700 – amuse myself by people-watching, guessing who might be a foreigner, following the progress of an argument that ended in about 10 municipal and military policemen arriving to get in on the action, and sniggering when I realise one of the policemen is pootling around on a segway. Avec bicycle helmet. Repeat after me – I am not at all willing him to fall off.....
1700-1715 – staring into space
1715-1800 – learnt some Portuguese eating words: knife – faca, fork – garfa, spoon – colher and other such useful things. Discovered that Poltrona is not just a powerful protective spell. Oh no, it means ‘seat’ in Portuguese. Not so glamorous huh, Ms Rowling?
1800-1830 – pick up just a bit more water (what if we break down? Whines my paranoia), some chewing gum (34 hours without a toothbrush), my bags from the lockers, and finally a salgado and orange juice from a snack bar. I’m not quite sure if we would stop for dinner. Then I descend to the gloomy platforms under the concourse. Let’s get on with it, shall we?
1830-1900 – wait around while what looks like the entire life possessions of at least two families are weighed and labelled for the luggage hold
1900 – finally! We have lift off. Seat neighbour has unfortunately arrived but he seems pretty benign – very quiet, slim (which also probably means he won’t snore, sitting up) and on crutches (so hopefully will not be eager to be up and down to the loo every hour). Doesn’t seem to smell yet either. Plenty of time for that.
I wish I knew more Portuguese so I could make conversation with the fella, offer to help him to the loo or off the bus, or get something out of his bag, or just ask him how he is. He looks pretty miserable.
Think I can see some empty seats near the back. Not sure what the etiquette is of moving to a seat that’s not yours. If no-one gets on in the outskirts I may try that out.
Current status: hot and sweaty and a bit apprehensive. And a bit disappointed that there isn’t at least one more foreigner on the bus. Aircon is on but I can’t feel it yet. Still, all that is warm and fluffly awaits in my hand luggage for when the chill descends.
Status of other passengers’ pastimes – mostly staring, a little chatting, one on the phone, and the guy across the aisle from me playing with a rubix cube. Respect.
Wish I had a window seat so I could at least lean against it to sleep. I hope for not too many mountainous stretches that throw you around.
1930 – 30 mins in. Don’t want to think about how long still to go. The only part of the driver’s speech that I caught before we left was the word for ‘24’. 24 hours? Noooo! Time for some staring I think. Someone at the back starts off a tag-team coughing session. These guys smoke like a rich ladies chimney in the middle of a wet January. The lights are turned off and lots of passengers try to sleep
1930-2230 – sleeping! I fancied tucking into the picnic stashed in my bag, but all the other reading lights were off, and I didn’t want to be the only one munching away with my light on. Am attempting the ‘when in Rome’ approach to bus travel. I also have my computer with me, charged and poised for emergency games of hearts and patience, but I don’t feel good about flashing my relative wealth around in a bus full of people who I can only assume can’t afford to fly. I also have to wander around alone with it when I get off this thing. Brazilians are generally lovely, but I’m sure there are one or two who wouldn’t say no to the opportunity to make a quick buck by relieving me of this when I disembarque.
2230 – We’ve stopped.....somewhere....for 15 mins. I get up to wander around if only because I think my neighbour doesn’t want to ask to get out. Out he indeed got after me, and smoked on the platform. Bugger. That’ll teach me to be charitable.
2245 – off again, and waiting for the aircon to do its thing and get rid of this lingering tobacco aroma
2245-0500 – an impressive amount of sleeping, for a bus. I can’t even remember if we stopped once or twice, but hardly anyone got off.
0500- Narrowly missed sunrise because another bus was in the way. We stop at a squat brick building in the middle of nowhere for a toilet that doesn’t pitch around when you’re on it, a face wash, and pao de queijo and coffee for breakfast (why did the English never think of baking the cheese into the dough, so that it stretches and bounces when you chew it?) I was itching to buy even more water, but was too groggy to deal with getting a ticket at the door and paying on exiting, just for that.
In the 10 hours we’ve been travelling the landscape has completely changed. Lush Atlantic forest has given way to scrubby savannah- like plains. I turn my attention to lion-spotting.
0500-0900 – more sleeping
0900-0930 – stop for second breakfast. I choke at paying four Reais for a bottle of water, and don’t allow myself to buy corn on the cob as penance. We have a new driver who drones out the same old introductory message – on auto pilot, his words slur together on a monotone and it’s hard to pick out the information. I think he said 7 hours to go. Yippee! But that means arriving in Salvador at 5pm. Sunset is 5.30 and I have a rule that arriving in a new town after dark is not the best time to explore their bus system. I’ll have to get a cab. And it’s a Sunday, which means much higher tariffs. Darn.
0930-1215 – make a start on the Sam Brown novel I’ve been carrying around with me for 3 weeks. Feel slightly guilty for doing this instead of practising Portuguese
1215-1245 – lunch stop, just as I had resorted to using the on-board loo, so I missed the announcement of how long we had here. I took the opportunity to practise a phrase i’d just learnt: por favour, quanto tempo ficaremos parados aqui? (how long are we stopped here please?) Unfortunately, all that came out was ‘Quanto tempo aqui?’ but no matter, it worked. 30 mins. Got my per kilo food – 256 grammes. That’s more like it. I wonder if I could start a diet craze in England where you weigh your food?
1250 – on the road again, with, I’m pretty sure, not everyone we should have. I return to my book. I never thought I’d be saying this, but please could you turn up the air conditioning?
1300-1630 – more reading, two more stops. Next stop Salvador! Did the driver say ¾ an hour? Current status: disgusting. My face is greasy , my hair is limp, my teeth are furry, and if I don’t lift up my arms to wave hello to you, it’s for your own benefit.
1800 – arrive Salvador, quick nip into the supermarket to stock up on water, then catch a cab to the hostel. The driver got lost, but charged me less, so I don’t mind too much. I arrive just in time for caiprinhas, but by this point, I was nowhere near social acceptable enough for that. I have never needed a shower more. But on the whole, I really enjoyed the mammoth bus trip. A day of sensory deprivation and enforced boredom was really restorative – the equivalent of a lazy Sunday in front of the tv – and once I had fully disinfected myself I was refreshed and ready to face Salvador!
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