Ouro Preto

Friday 27th May 1988

We arrived at Ouro Preto just after the grey dawn. A man outside the Rodoviário Bus Terminal had handed me a card for the Pousada Ciclo de Ouro at Felipe dos Santos 241. This cost 700 Cruzados for Bed and Breakfast.

The historic colonial town was scattered about the steep green hills below the Ouro Preto Bus Terminal. Distinctive curved tiled roofs, steep slippery rain-slick cobbled streets and more churches than you could shake a stick at!

I had breakfast at the pleasant friendly guest house where I met Uli from Berlin and Tom from Holland. After breakfast we went out to see the town. It was like something out of a time machine, apart from the modern cars.

Founded at the end of the 17th century, Ouro Preto (meaning Black Gold) was originally called Vila Rica, or "Rich Town", the focal point of the gold rush and Brazil's golden age in the 18th century under Portuguese rule. Between 1695 and 1696, a gold-bearing stream was discovered in Itacolomi, which would be renamed Gualacho do Sul.

In 1711, several small settlements were united as a municipality called Villa Rica, which later came to be called Ouro Preto. This name was adopted on 20th May 1823, when the former Vila Rica was elevated from village to city. "Black Gold" comes from the gold covered with a layer of iron oxide that is found in the city.

The city centre contains well-preserved Portuguese colonial architecture, with few signs of modern urban development. New construction must keep with the city's historical aesthetic. 18th- and 19th-century churches decorated with gold and the sculptured works of Aleijadinho make Ouro Preto a tourist destination.

The tremendous wealth from gold mining in the 18th century created a city which attracted the intelligentsia of Europe. Philosophy and art flourished, and evidence of a baroque revival called the "Barroco Mineiro" is illustrated in architecture as well as by sculptors such as Aleijadinho, painters such as Mestre Athayde, composers such as Lobo de Mesquita, and poets such as Tomás António Gonzaga. At that time, Vila Rica was the largest city in Brazil, with 100,000 inhabitants.

Rich people believed that by building a church it would give them guaranteed entry to heaven. We went to one of these ornate churches with a museum containing paraphernalia such as chalices in gold and silver, paintings and sculptures of saints being pious. There were gory crucifixion works, souls in torment pictures and all the usual Catholic religious gubbins.

We walked up to a solid church on a high point overlooking the whole town where a couple of kids flew kites. We walked back to the central Praça Tiradentes (The place where the head of the martyr of independence, Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, tiradentes was exposed (1792) in Vila Rica, present-day Ouro Preto.), wading through the gemstone touts and caught a bus to the Minas da Passagem.

Halfway between Ouro Preto and Mariana, this ancient gold mine was founded by the Portuguese in 1719 and definitively decommissioned in 1985. Here we paid an excessive 500 Cruzados for a run into the abandoned mineshaft on the miners train.

Google research reveals that The Passage Mine is one of the largest mines still existing for visitation in the world, located in the Brazilian municipality of Mariana, in the Quadrilátero Ferrífero area, in the state of Minas Gerais. Located in the district of Passagem de Mariana and about 7,200 km² long, the mine of the passage is the largest mine in this region with its 30 km of tunnels, with underground lakes of crystal-clear waters.

In 1729, the first mine deposits were discovered, which only began to be explored more than 100 years later. During the gold cycle in Minas Gerais by the Portuguese and English who even extracted 35 tons of gold. The mine was shut down in 1954 but was reopened for visitation in the 1970s. Nowadays the mine is used for tourism, it is one of the largest meeting points for cave divers in Brazil.

We saw rusting machinery, a shrine to the miner’s patron saint, St Procopius, and a blue subterranean lake of copper sulphate solution. Apparently, the gold miners had a dicey job risking silicosis and arsenic poisoning.

We returned to town and visited the mineral museum where we saw beautifully coloured gems and minerals. Apparently, it was one of the largest collections of rocks and minerals in the world, including diamonds, uranium, topaz, quartz, agates and much more. It is housed inside the School of Mines.

We then visited a rather ornate church, partly to stay out of the rain. I bought birthday cards for my sister Katy Subanney and my dad, Harry Hawkins, and wrote them over a coffee in a café by the Post Office.

Back at the hotel I had a long overdue shower and joined Uli and Tom to see “Superman IV” at the town cinema. Superman IV: The Quest for Peace is a 1987 superhero film directed by Sidney J. Furie and written by Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal from a story by Christopher Reeve, Konner, and Rosenthal based on the DC Comics character Superman.

The film stars Reeve, Gene Hackman, Jackie Cooper, Marc McClure, Jon Cryer, Sam Wanamaker, Jim Broadbent, Mariel Hemingway, and Margot Kidder. It was the fifth film in the Superman film series and a sequel to Superman III (1983). It was also the final appearance of Christopher Reeve as Superman.

We had a good evening meal in the cellar restaurant on the steeply sloping Rua Conde Bobadela and left the establishment too early, missing the live music as we were all too tired. The town was livening up with a wealth of young students out on the streets.

I went to bed and fell asleep immediately despite the noise of revelry outside.