During the long ride to Tiradentes, I drafted the blog I posted about Ouro Preto.  The road has an elegant name – Estrada Real – but it is a two-lane road with frequent speed bumps.  It was a bit of a challenge typing while bouncing around the van.  The countryside is beautiful and could easily be West Virginia, western North Carolina or North Georgia but for the different variety of flora.  Verdant hills, open pastures and forested mountains.  We took a coffee break mid-way at a lovely café.  They had the traditional wood burning stove going and although it was mid afternoon were making various meat dishes.  These cook stoves look like barbecue pits with brick walls around three sides and an large iron plate across the top which becomes the cooking surface.

As we were admiring the landscape out the back of the café, Antonella pointed out an ipé tree which is the type of wood we used to make the counter and my desk and shelves at the beach.  It has a beautiful flower as well aw wonderful wood.

Finally we knew we were close to Tiradentes when the road turned to cobblestones again.  Our hotel Solar do Ponte (house near the bridge) is lovely and spacious.  It has been a lifelong project of John Parsons, an Englishman.  Solar is apparently a large square house but this hotel is much more.  It has lovely grounds and a pool.  At the moment work is being done to demolish the pool house and to make it suitable for gatherings of various sorts.    Sitting next to the demolished pool house is this fantastic old steam engine.  The house has been restored in the traditional way.  Dom explained that the pains taken by John to restore it in the traditional way has kept alive some of the old skills.  The rooms are spacious and comfortable with high ceilings.  Since John may read this blog, I will say that the addition of magnifying mirrors over the sink would be a welcome addition for a man’s shaving and a woman’s makeup application.  I have no doubt that the hotel is the loveliest in Tiradentes.  It serves breakfast and tea in the afternoon but otherwise does not have a restaurant.

Just inside the gate, we found that our bikes for the ride the next day were already delivered and we were able to inspect them.

While we were freshening up I received a call from Robert Ballentyne, a Scotsman who has lived in Tiradentes many years.  A mutual friend, Eduardo Tess, had alerted him to our arrival.  We had a nice chat and arranged to meet at the hotel at 7 the next night.  We gathered in the lobby where we met an author named Eduardo Gianetti and John Parsons the English expat who owns our hotel.  Gianetti has written a book entitled The Lies We Live With.  John Parsons told us it was very depressing and that once you read it you do not trust your instincts about what you want or think.  He was very pleasant but seemed a little introverted.  John agreed to join us for drinks at a little spot in the main square.  He was trained as an engineer and has been in Tiradentes for 40 years.  Although he did not look or seem it, we were told his age is 83.  On Tuesday he will take the 4 hour bus ride to Rio for a meeting of the Brazilian Hotel Association, a founder of which he apparently is.  He told us he largely turned the operation of the hotel to his stepson but obviously he is still active.  Contrary to my assumption before I came here, there are apparently not that many expats in this town of 10,000.  He explained that we had arrived at the very best time, where the average Brazilian was either recuperating from Carnival and or resting up for Easter.  Easter is a big deal with processing starting and midnight and elaborate festivals. 

After drinks we walked on to Tragoluz, (literally bring the light) our restaurant for the evening.  Ben, Gail and Caroline had salmon.  Dom asked the waiter from whence came the salmon and he answered Belo Horizonte.  Dom sent him back to the kitchen to ask the chef.  We were then told Chile.  They liked their salmon from wherever it came.  I had a pepper steak and Dom has a filet of pork.  We were both was satisfied but it was too much food and I was forced to leave half of it on the plate.    We had a very good bottle of wine, a Malbec from Mendoza named La Origen.

The next morning we arose and had breakfast at 7:30. The breakfast would normally be served at eight but Dom had requested they prepare it for 7.  They only missed by one half hour.  Ben and I showed up at 7 to get coffee to take to Gail and Caroline.  We were not admitted to the kitchen until the coffee appeared which was 7:30.  To our pleasant surprise John was still around and joined us for breakfast.  His bus was at 8:15 and we had a departure for the bike ride at 8:30.  We were joined by a local guide name Louis.  His grandparents were from Portugal and were Jewish.  They became Roman Catholic during the Inquisition out of necessity and left for Tiradentes to help build the church there.   He has developed a fascination with the Inconfidentia – the unsuccessful effort by Tiradentes, the man, and others to break the yoke with Portugal. Louis has written a book about Pater Toledo, a priest who was a part of the rebellion.  We drove a little ways out of town and started the bike ride on a paved road that took us through beautiful countryside and after about 10K to a little town called Prados.  It was established after emancipation of the slaves to serve as a community for freed slaves.  Looking at the people we saw, there did not seem to be any dominant racial theme to the current population.   Just as we dismounted our bikes a bug flew into Ben’s ear and he had to struggle to get it out.  He found a pharmacy and purchased some alcohol to try to use to chase it out and some cotton swabs to dig with.  Here he is struggling:

Ben has actually been something of a target for the insects.  He has multiple mosquito bites from the Pantanal, picked up a spider bite in Ouro Preto and now the ear invasion.  Caroline and Gail also suffered from the mosquitos but I have been luckily bite free, which is not usually the case.

We walked around town, saw the church and took some photos.

We headed out of town on its cobblestones until we were in the countryside again and on an asphalt road.  After a few K we came to a dirt road turned off towards the town of Bischinho on foot. On the way we stopped to watch a group of men struggling to load a bull onto a small pickup truck.  The bull decidedly did not want to go and was still succeeding in resisting when we left.  Louis told us Bischinho is a nickname for the town and the man for whom the town is named is named Vitoriana Concalves Veloso.  He was a mulatto who managed to get involved with Tiradentes and the other Inconfidentes.   Although his role was minor he was executed due, Louis said, to his race.   Our lunch was at Tempuoa d’Angela.  A traditional lunch similar to what we had in Ouro Preto was the fare offered.  Here is a picture of her wood burning kitchen.

The food was delicious.

After lunch the ladies looked around at the shops and then we returned to Tiradentes to walk around with Louis to learn a little about it.

Tiradentes is a much more pleasant city to be in than Ouro Preto.  While it also has cobblestones Tiradentes is more livable, flatter and smaller.  As I noted above, It has a population of 10,000.  In the summer it is the locus of an increasingly well-known food festival.

We returned to the hotel to enjoy the hotel’s tea.  It was accompanied with various sweet breads that including short bread cookies, banana nut bread and the ever present little cheese biscuits.  After tea we had a little time in the rooms to freshen up and prepare for diner.

At seven, we were joined by Robert Ballentyne.  He was not able to join us for dinner but in the short 45 minutes of our visit it was a whirlwind.  Robert is Scottish and was in the British diplomatic corps, serving a portion of that in the Secret Service.  He began his career in Lebanon, served a number of years in Uganda when Idi Amin was there.  He was present for the Entebbe raid by the Israeli commandos who freed the passengers of an Air France Tel Aviv to New York flight that was high jacked containing Israeli citizens.  He also served for some time in Thailand during the era of the Vietnam war.  He was in the consular corps in Sao Paulo.  He met our friend Eduardo Tess and Eduardo’s Scottish wife Christiana during that time.

A few years ago, Robert had an aneurism in his leg and as a result lost the leg.  He has a prosthesis for his left leg.

After our visit with Robert we walked to our restaurant Estalagem do Sabor.  The fare is traditional Minas with a reputation for the finest local ingredients.  It lived up to its reputation.  We were the only customers there.  In fact, few of the places we visited seemed to be very busy except for Tempuro D’angela in Bischinho.  After a full day of biking, hiking and exploring the towns turning in for the night came especially welcomed. 

Wednesday will be a travel day.  We are a little worried abut the weather.  Rio and the coast have been having very heavy rains, some roads are washed and flying weather is affected. We are heading to Paraty which is between Rio and Sao Paulo.  We have decided to move our our departure by a couple of hours and leave at noon.  We will take horse carts out of town at 9:30 am to visit a knife store Gail and Caroline have read about.  When we asked Robert Ballentyne about it he was disparaging.  The store is run by a Cossack (Robert says he does not like to be called a Russian) and Robert thinks he over charges.  On the other hand Robert was very disparaging about the merchandise in his own store so we are not sure how to calibrate his opinions.