Ouro Preto

The first thing one does when arriving in a town is to check the onward journey. Lonely Planet is pretty good on telling you how often and when the buses leave for your next destination. We were due to travel from Tiredentes to Ouro Preto by bus, quite possible according to Lonley Planet. But,  Agh we were told there were no buses from Tiredentes to Ouro Preto, unless we wanted to take a 4 hour journey to a big city and then catch a bus the way we had travelled to Ouro Preto - total journey time 6. Hours. Solution - take taxi - 3 hours!  Which of course we did. Can't believe Lonely Planet got it wrong.
Anyway Ouro Preto is fascinating. Set in a very ancient volcano caldera with hills all over the place the city has incredibly steep cobbled narrow streets. The whole city,was, at one time a huge gold mining city. The mining was done by the slaves, who suffered unbelievable conditions.

The entrance to the mine was usually so narrow it was hard to walk along the passage way

 The slaves then had to mine the gold ore down shafts like this. They worked for roughly 16 hours at a time. In chains.

As I said the streets were very steep 

The city was spread out over the hills

Some of the old buildings were beautifully restored .

But the cobbles really difficult to walk on.

There were some 20 churches in the city, but all very similar. We learnt here why photographs are forbidden .  The inside of the churches have beautiful carvings of saints and the holy family, all covered in gold leaf.  In the 1970's tourists were taking pictures and having replicas made and selling them. 

It was Copus Christi when we were there and angles were coming out of the churches

While proud Grandparents looked on.

We came across a restaurant with waters soliciting you. But which one is the real one? 

 Ouro Preto is a university town. The students have to make money somehow

In the old days the unmarried girls used to look longingly out of the windows, now the carved images look longingly out of the Windows.