35 hours later, I'm home ...

Door to door, from my hotel in downtown Belo Horizonte to my home in Melbourne, took 35 hours.  No glitches though, so it was just a matter of being a kind of passive zombie, and following orders ... LAN Airlines again very impressive, as were TAM on the Brazilian domestic flight, but not Qantas on the cattle run from Auckland to Melbourne!

Serra da Piedade - wild and windy at 1,700m

Warning: this movie file is probably large, even though the resolution has been degraded by the blogger.com process.  Only click on it if you have real broadband :-)

A windy Brazilian Independence Day (7/9/2010) up on Serra da Piedade, replete with 100s of pilgrims variously walking, cycling, bus-ing, etc. their way up to the peak, to the Igreja Nossa Senhora da Piedade.

'On the road' section of the blog done ...

It's 9:15pm here in Brazil, Wednesday 8 September 2010 - already Thursday in Australia as I write.  Just before noon tomorrow Brazil time I start the long trek back to Australia, so I think my travel blogging is just about done - unless I get bored at Santiago or Auckland airports!

Thanks for reading - I hope it conveyed some of the fun and enjoyment I got from travelling from conference to workplace to university to workplace .... to this point - it's bedtime for the last time in Brazil this trip.

Mercado Central, Belo Horizonte

I know it's one of the traps of travelling to compare what you find to that back home, and come down on the side of the new ... but I'm confident the central market (Mercado Central) in BH leaves the Vic or Preston Markets for dead ... no comment on other ones I'm less familiar with (Prahran, South Melbourne, etc.).  The sheer range and quality of 'stuff', and relatively little repetition, is really impressive.

OK - so far it's just a market, albeit one with chaotic parking above the stalls.

Abundant and cheap spices ....

A house of cheese!

If you're going to make caipirinhas, here's where you start - at the cachaça shop.

Eggs galore - chook, quail ...

brasileiros eat these desserts in tiny amounts - just as well they ARE sweet - but the candied pineapple and orange rind are delicious - so too the guava paste, milky desserts .... mmmmm

the big ones under the knife are palmito (palm hearts), and manioc (cassava) to the right - starchy staples here.

Fantastic fresh produce ...

Carne de sol (sun dried meat) at the 'palace of feijoada' (Palácio da Feijoada).  If you want to know more about Brazil's national dish, Google feijoada, but not if you're squeamish. 

Common in stall and shop names around here, the words palácio (palace) and rei (king) tell you that these folks consider themselves at the pointy end of excellence in whatever it is that they're selling.  Consequently though, palaces and kings abound - they can't all be right ;-)

More pixação - translocated to Belo Horizonte

I mentioned how intrigued I was by São Paulo's indigenous grafitti style, called pixação ... well I found some better examples in downtown Belo Horizonte, in a location safe enough to stand on the street with a camera!  Call me a rebel if you like, but I think the pleasing symmetry and clever use of the space on the bigger building in particular has artistic merit. 

(click to enlarge - all photos are re-sized on here to fit the template)

A visit to the supermercado in BH

I'm always intrigued to compare cities and cultures by what finds its way on to supermarket shelves, and get a relative idea of the cost of living from the prices there.  So, off to a downtown supermercado in Centro, BH for some research ...

Which aisle are the car tyres in?  Next to thongs of course (Havaianas knock-offs from China).

The bananas have the apples surrounded ...

Red onions for $R3,48 per kilogram - around $AUD2.25

Part of the coffee aisle - how could any good Catholic go past the 'Bom Jesus' (Good Jesus) brand?  Bom Jesus is probably a place name from memory ... anyhow Bom Jesus coffe goes for $R2,50 per 250g, as do some of the mere mortal brands.

A few Oscar Niemeyer buildings in Belo Horizonte

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Oscar has been a busy boy during is 102 years on earth so far.  He's very famous outside Brazil for his work at Brasília, but BH has had his attention quite a few times.

My favourite of the few I've seen in the flesh is Edifício Niemeyer.  The stunning sinuous curves supposedly reference the mountainous terrain of Minas Gerais state - it's just a beautiful modernist building (is that an oxymoron?).

Edifício Niemeyer (1955), Praça da Liberdade, Belo Horizonte

The Igreja São Francisco de Assis (Church of St Francis of Assisi) was so disquieting to the establishment when constructed in 1943 that the Catholic Archdiocese of BH initially refused to consecrate it as a church!  Now of course it's one of the city's main tourist attractions, and an operating church.

Igreja São Francisco de Assis (1943)

In contrast to the last two, his public library building, Biblioteca Pública Estadual Luiz de Bessa, on the other side of Praça da Liberdade from the Edifício Niemeyer, blends in to its surroundings somewhat.

Biblioteca Pública Estadual Luiz de Bessa (1954)