churches galore and polkadot chickens

time to update!!

we arrived in ouro preto and were carted off to a pretty little pousada in the hilly city of ouro preto. ouro preto is overrun by churches and tourist shops, of which we visited almost all. churches for the culture (the last ones we saw only from the outside) and tourist shops for god-statues (unsuccessful once again). the rest of the time we spent climbing hills slowly while taking lots of photos (which can be admired on diligent blogger sao-mai's page), eating gratins and drinking beer on the main square, and internetting.

the next morning we took a bus to sao joao del rei, where we had yummy kilo food and then explored the city. once it was past five o'clock and the museums were officially closed, we were free to stop looking for them and sat in a cafe to people watch. in the evening sao-mai read her swedish book to me (translating while she was reading, obviously).

next day> tiradentes. guide: "towns don't come any prettier than this". our review: "booooring, and just as pretty as all the other colonial style cities with lots of churches." the only difference here were the hello kitty horse coaches for tourists.

we did manage to entertain ourselves, however.
- there was a store filled to the brim with random crap, collected over several decades by the owner, his father, and his grandfather. a back room even had straw stuffed dolls in old old dentist chairs. creepy, but interesing.
- another factor of interest was an old artist who had lived in paris for 10 years. he drew us a map of the town to show us how to get to a little waterfall-spring, which we never did find. we did, however, finally see the famous polkadot chickens that can be seen in every tourist shop. yay for chickens!
- tiradentes brought us one more joy> we found a god thing! it's not a statue, but it's cool, and as good as it's going to get.

we ended our tiradentes day early, and spent the evening in sao joao doing more people watching on the main jogging highway.

next stop> rio.