In Aleijadinho’s last years of life, he undertook the ambitious project of creating the stations of the cross and statues of the twelve prophets high atop a hillside in Congonhas. The basilica itself, is pretty plain, but unlike any of the other Aleijadinho work we saw, you could actually get up close and photograph his work since it was primarily outside. It was his crowning glory and reportedly completed in only five years.

Starting at the bottom of the hill, you work your way through little structures that have vivid, and seemingly perfectly preserved, wooden statues of the stations of the cross. Then, as you climb, perhaps allegorically?, you reach the top of the hill and the basilica. Here, the old testament prophets greet you, and with lively expressiveness, beckon you forward.

It’s out of the way, but worth a detour if you are ever anywhere near Congonhas in Minas Gerais.

Brazil’s colonial history is replete with using slave labor from Africa to accomplish nasty tasks. Ouro Preto’s mining industry is certainly no exception. It may be strange then, that my favorite church in Ouro Preto was the church that the slaves were forced to worship at, the Igreja de Nossa Senhora do Rosario.

I was able to spend a lot of time taking photos of it because it was literally across the street from our hotel, so in some ways it was the most familiar. It is distinct and unusual, though, because its floorplan is formed by three intersecting ovals.

Another surprising feature is that the saints on the inside all have black faces, something that I have rarely seen in my travels. (It took us four tries to get in, as the church opens at the whim of its caretaker.) Aleijadinho, who I mentioned in my previous post, was also the sculptor for some of the church. I wonder whether his own African heritage caused him to think to change the sculptures to match the skin color of the church’s worshipers.

There is also another church in town that is also part of the slave history in Ouro Preto0–the Igreja de Santa Efigȇnia. Santa Efigȇnia is an Ethiopian saint that many of the slaves revered. Legend says that Chico Rei, a slave who bought his own freedom by smuggling flakes of gold out of the mine, eventually bought the mine, and freed all of the other slave-miners. He is a folk hero throughout Minas Gerais and Brazil. Ultimately, he funded the construction of this church.

Up close the church is deteriorating and we could not visit the inside because of ongoing work, but it is one of the churches I was most drawn to from a distance. I have photo after photo of it from different angles and in different lighting. It was captivating.

With the dramatic hills of Ouro Preto, its churches make the perfect crown to each hilltop. There are too many of these jewels to visit all of them in just a few days, but we managed to visit six plus three others in neighboring Mariana. In the photo above, you can see the corner of the Igreja Sȁo Francisco de Paulo with the distinctive peak, Itacolomi, in the distance.

Aside from the obvious Catholicism, one theme that ties them all together is the prolific and masterful influence of the sculptor Aleijadinho (pronounced: allay-gsa-jean-yo), whose expressive carvings are present in nearly every church.

He came into the world via an unlikely pairing of an architect and a black woman, and left the world a blind cripple, presumably suffering from leprosy for many of his last years. The great influence that he achieves, along with his painter cohort, Ataide, is truly remarkable and inspiring. They say that he continued to carve even after he could no longer walk.

His masterpiece is the Igreja Sȁo Francisco de Assis (above), which is indeed beautiful. Unfortunately, none of the churches in Ouro Preto allowed photography inside the church, so I can only show you external images. Nevertheless, even the exterior shows some of the emotion and vibrance evident in Aleijadinho’s sculpture.

Below is the Igreja de Mercês e Perdões, which charmingly translates to the Church of Favors and Pardons. We admired it from afar, as we did not get there to go inside.

Ouro Preto is in the middle of the huge Brazilian state, Minas Girais. (See my previous post from many months ago in Tiradentes, 2.5 hours away.) We were initially drawn to Ouro Preto because it was described as one of South America’s most beautiful towns, often mentioned in the same sentence with Cartagena, Colombia and Cuzco, Peru.

So many times, places don’t live up to their billing. In Ouro Preto, which was Brazil’s first UNESCO World Heritage site, I was prepared for disappointment. I had been in a couple of towns in the region that had some beautiful things, but that on the whole, seemed a bit tired and shabby. So, I arrived with low to no expectations.

After having spent three days exploring the nooks and crannies of Ouro Preto, now all I have are superlatives. Not only did it live up to its hype, it exceeded my expectations. It’s a beauty of a town whose heyday was during Brazil’s gold rush in the mid-19th Century. At one point, it actually had a larger population than New York City or Rio during the same period.

The town’s amazing variety and breadth of historic buildings seems to have been rather ironically preserved because of the inevitable depletion of the region’s gold. At its height, Ouro Preto was the capital of Minas Gerais, but when the gold ran out, the capital moved westward to Belo Horizonte and the region became too poor to build anything new. Crazy, huh?

The result is a perfectly preserved town built on the mountainous countryside of the area. Moving around is challenging, because these are serious hills that would rival Seattle or San Francisco. It was great exercise, though, to hike up and down as we toured the town’s many and varied churches.

My next posts will have more about the churches and the master sculptor that made so many of them possible: Aleijadinho.

Joe had gone to the gym and I was quietly working on my computer in our living room. As you know from my earlier post, I enjoy listening to the neighborhood birds and have gotten to know what they sound like and where the sounds come from. On that day, I started to notice a loud “PEEP” coming from our kitchen. I never hear sounds from that direction, though the windows are almost always open in there.

Eventually, I got up to investigate the persistent peeping. Sure enough there was a bird sitting on the ledge just outside the window. (These windows swing open from the bottom and reach out 18 inches or so if fully extended.) He was a Robin-sized bird, and though common, I’m not sure what kind he was. He was tan and dingy yellow with brown stripes down his sides. Not wanting to scare him into the house, I snuck away and hoped the PEEP would disappear.

Just after I posted my story, this guy appeared in our tree! I think it's the same kind of bird, though my description was inaccurate.

It did! Hurray. I closed the window so that it was just cracked – maybe 3 inches. It was warm, and I wanted to keep the air circulating. My euphoria was not to last very long, though. Ten minutes after he had flown away, the PEEP was back and this time it was really loud.

So, I peeked cautiously around the corner to see what had happened: he was fully inside on the glass shelf under the window. He had snuck through the cracked window! What in the world compelled him to squeeze through it?

Now I had a dilemma. I did not want him to enter further into the house, but to get him back out I would need to shoo him out the window, which was still only slightly cracked. In my place in Seattle, I frequently had birds that got confused in my window-filled apartment. Their end was never happy and it usually meant I had to get out rubber gloves to remove the limp body. I did not want that to happen this time.

I closed all the doors to the kitchen and left, crossing my fingers that he would just go away. The peeping continued, so after several tortured minutes, I decided I had to go in. By then, I had read on the Internet that closing all the window coverings would help prevent him from flying into closed windows. But entering, of course, risked the bird freaking out, so I needed to be quick.

I found a hat and got my tennis racket — I looked pretty ridiculous. The hat was just in case he wanted a role in Hitchcock’s The Birds, and the tennis racket was to push the window open from the greatest possible distance. Inevitably, he got spooked while I closed the curtains and shut doors. He flew into a corner under a cabinet on the floor, completely away from the window.

So I left again, hoping that he will just find his own way out through the now wide open window. I posted on Facebook to see if any friends here had ideas about what to do. Many told me, just throw a towel over him and take him outside. Yeah, sure. It would have been tough with his first spot, but impossible with his new hiding place because of all the stuff in the way.

Meanwhile, as he peeped away, I was getting nothing done. I couldn’t concentrate and was focused on his frequent PEEPs of distress. And, where was Joe so that I didn’t have to deal with the bird on my own? Getting ever more annoyed, I suffered silently in the living room, able to do nothing but listen and wonder. Eventually, the PEEPs did stop. I waited another ten minutes to be sure and I cautiously snuck into the kitchen to see. After three hours, the bird had finally figured out how to leave. Needless to say, I closed all the windows, tight!

I will admit that ever since I have been hesitant to open the kitchen windows, but it’s just too hot, so open they are. So far, no sign of my Bird Terrorist – I hope that he learned his lesson.

The neighborhood that we live in is called Moema. It’s a large neighborhood, so one half is actually referred to as Moema-Indians, where all the street names are hard-to-pronounce indigenous names like Alameda dos Nhambiquaras or Alameda dos Maracatins. And, our half is Moema-Birds, where the streets have names like Rua Sabiá (Robin St.), Rua Pavão (Peacock St.), or our street, Rua Pintassilgo (Finch St.).

It’s been fun to learn bird names in Portuguese by wandering the area and looking them up later. Some are very exotic sounding like Rouxinol, pronounced ho-shee-noh-oo, which means nightingale, or sweet sounding like Canário, which is more obviously, a canary. I also discovered an strange looking bird with a cool name: Macuco. It’s supposed to be a Solitary Tinamou in English.

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, or if it’s really how our neighborhood got its name, but we really do have lots of birds that frequent our block. People who visit our apartment tell me their neighborhood isn’t the same.

I love waking up in the morning to the sounds of the various birds. There’s one in particular that is called Bem-Ti-Vi, which literally means “Nice to See You!”. Their song sounds like it would if you were saying his name: something like Beng Chee Vee. It’s really quite charming. I think in English the actual bird is called Kiskadee (which ironically has the same rhythm as Bem-Ti-Vi).

Another of my favorite bird-visitors, I named early on: Ssaro. I basically took the last half of the word for bird in Portuguese: pássaro. “Ssaro” is a regular visitor to our terrace. He has the sweetest song that is quite melodious. (Don’t ask me why I think he’s a he!)  I’ve tried to record him singing, but I usually manage to scare him off before he gets recorded. Several people have told me he’s either a finch or a canary. I need to do some more research to find out which. He’s a dirty yellow with brownish bits.

Our most colorful visitors, beyond a doubt, are the dozens of parakeets that hang out in the tree below our bedroom window. They are brilliant green and are VERY noisy. They will often wake me up with their loud squawks if I’ve slept too late. They seem to be quite territorial and chase away most other birds who come by.

This leads me to a mystery that I’ve finally solved. Last summer, I thought the tree below our window was dead–there were absolutely no leaves on it, and only a few weird marble-sized balls  on the ends of branches. (This may be when my bird-watching started, because I could see the birds in the tree so easily.) Imagine my surprise this spring when the tree was fully leafed out in vibrant and healthy leaves. At the time, I wondered if maybe it leafed out only every other year.

The mystery of this tree has been solved as I watched our street’s birds. Little by little, the birds of Pintassilgo have been eating it throughout the spring and summer. I’m not kidding! The tree is probably half picked-over right now, with little stubs of leaves left on large sections of the tree. The parakeets by far do the most consuming. I imagine by May or June it will be bare again like I saw it last year. Who knew I would come to Brazil and be a bird-watcher!

(PS – if you know about birds help me identify the first few photos!)

It is always refreshing to find someplace completely unusual, beyond typical descriptions. For me that was certainly true of our three days in Valparaíso, Chile. Crammed chaotically between the Chilean coast and massive hillsides, Valparaíso is a unique experience. This oddball combination may be one of the reasons why it is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

There is no doubt in my mind that it is one of the most colorful places I’ve ever visited. I always enjoy seeing how color is incorporated around the world, and in South America, there’s always a lot of it, so it’s probably dangerous to use superlatives. Nevertheless, it’s almost as if there was a city-wide mandate that required all citizens to get out and add their color imprint to the public space.

Imagine a place where each building and house tries to outdo itself in bright hues of red, green, blue, purple and yellow. Then add on top of that graffiti of all sorts that pleasingly fills doorways, alleys, and walls. Then put in details like painting electrical casings or stair banisters with flowers, snakes, or patterns. And then multiply the image many-fold! It was pretty amazing. While going to a cute little hide-away for lunch, we came across an entire plaza that was being covered, and I do mean covered, in bright mosaics. It was only partially finished, but the parts that were completed were clearly meant to fit in with the cacophony of Valparaíso.

A few other things also stuck out. First had to be the hills and the maze of winding tiny streets. (I can’t believe I didn’t include our arrival there in my “driving” post!) There were at least 15 major cerros (hills): think Lombard Street in San Francisco or Dravus in Seattle, in other words: steep. Because the town is very old, its streets are narrow and twisted, mainly to enable getting up and down hills. As a result, a lot of the time, you can’t easily drive (or walk) from one to the other, even though they are relatively close by.

Because going downhill is a lot easier than going up, folks from Valpo (the town’s nickname) long ago built 15 funicular trams to get you back up the hill. Placed strategically around the city, several of the funiculars date back to the 1880s. (Frankly, they looked like they’d barely changed.) It was essential to find out where to grab the funicular to get up and down the hills on foot. Once you knew where they were, you could get around pretty easily.

The other thing that you couldn’t miss were all the dogs. This was actually true throughout Chile. While I think many of the dogs lived on the street, they weren’t your typical mangy, generic, could-be-any-breed mutt. You saw many types of what appeared to be pure or nearly purebreds: German Shepherds, Chows, Lhasa Apsos, Beagles, Labs, and so on. You get the idea. They appeared well-fed and were certainly well-behaved.

Until nighttime, that is. Once it got dark, I was returned to my days in Bucharest where roaming packs of dogs had huge and noisy skirmishes at night. Our sleep was more than once interrupted by dogs having barkfests and/or fights in the valley below our hotel. By the last night, though, they became part of the background noise of the town, and we hardly noticed them. One big difference from the dogs in Romania, though, were that these dogs were clearly not afraid of humans. It seemed like Chilenos just embraced their presence (and probably took care of them too).

It was a place where it felt like you could keep coming back to enjoy the comfortable pace and the unique surroundings.

If you ever go, here are a few of the things we enjoyed most:

• Dinner at Pasta y Vino
• Lunch at Cafe Turri – fabulous views
• Hotel Cirilo Armstrong
• Pablo Neruda house: La Sebastiana (see my next post about all of his homes in Chile)
• Views from Cerro Artillero
• Simply wandering the hills!

Note…we had so many photos of Valpo that couldn’t be included. Be sure to check out the photos in the link on the right side if you haven’t already!

Our plan was to explore the wine country around Mendoza, Argentina (Uco and Maipú Valleys) and the Colchagua wine-producing area around Santa Cruz, Chile, all the while fitting in other sightseeing in Valparaíso and Santiago.

The two countries’ wine-producing areas each had incredible wines, and of course, the magnificent backdrop of the Andes, but there the similarities stopped. In Argentina, the vines were still fairly dormant and the climate was quite arid. In Chile, we saw lots of green and the valleys seemed downright lush by comparison. Remember it’s Spring down here.

On the other hand, there were a lot more tourists in Argentina and the wine tourism industry was much more developed: good restaurants, amazing hotels and lots of ways to move around. In Chile, we were often the only ones visiting the vineyards (not such a bad thing), we stayed in a pricey, but marginal B&B, and without a car, I’m not sure how we’d have gotten around.

Another big difference in Chile were the huge and dented fermenting tanks from the February earthquake that littered several parking lots. There were even a few wineries that we couldn’t visit because they were still closed to tourism. We heard some interesting stories about the impact of the earthquake including, the spilled wine seeping into the water table and locals literally having wine coming out of their tap! Most vineyards, though, reported that the harvest had just begun back in February, and that most of the grapes were still on the vine. It sounded like not too much was actually lost.

One thing that both countries certainly had in common was a true love of producing wines. I found there was an interesting dichotomy: winemakers who had been around for many, many decades, and also many wineries had a new and modern feel to them (sometimes with French or American influences). There was a pride in production that was admirable.

Both countries also talked about how precisely they could control the water that the vines received due to the low annual rainfall. We also noticed right away how there were weeds/flowers growing in between the rows. The vineyards said that this made their vines stronger because they had to compete for nutrients. In the end, we spent more time in Chile (and had a better idea by then of how it all worked), so we visited a lot more vineyards there. Between the two countries we saw twelve different vineyards!

Without a doubt. the two most spectacular were Salentein in Argentina and Casa L’Apostolle in Chile. L’Apostolle’s first vintage Clos Apalta (2005) won wine of the year from Wine Spectator in 2008. We were able to snag a bottle of the 2006.

Clos Apalta makes very small-run wines, with the ability as a result, to pick the grapes literally, one-by-one. Their wine-making site begins at the top of a hill and burrows several layers into the rock underground. They use gravity to move the wine gently through the process from level to level.

Before we left Chile, we went to one last winery just on the outskirts of Santiago in Pirque, the well-known (and huge!) Concha y Toro. Compared to the personalized tours that we had it was cheesy, but on our own, we did enjoy a wonderful tasting in the restaurant with Chilean empanadas, meats and cheeses.

Here are some more photos. Hover over the photo to see a brief description.

Finally, our favorite…

• line of wines: Mont Gras – Chile
• tasting experience: Salentein – Argentina
• winery for beauty: L’Apostolle – Chile
• wine tour: Viña Montes – Chile
• lunch at a winery: Di Tomassi – Argentina
• wine bar: Vines of Mendoza – Argentina
• wine store: El Mundo de Vinos – Santiago, Chile
• dinner: Pasta e Vino – Valparaiso, Chile
• bottles purchased: Mont Gras 200 2009, Mont Gras Quatro 2008, Salentein Nimina 2006, Marques de Casa Concha Merlot 2007, Clos Apalta 2007 (there were 21 all-together!)
• restaurant bottles: Miguel Escuelito Gascon Pequenos Produciones Malbec 2007, Concha y Torro Terrunyo Carmenere

We landed in Santiago and immediately left on a six hour drive for Mendoza, Argentina. Going from Chile to Argentina involves, of course, crossing the Andes. We had a spectacular day for the drive with bright, blue skies, though we knew we’d be fighting for daylight once we arrived to our hotel. Throughout our trip, we were rarely far from the Andes. They were spectacular and never disappointed.

As it turned out, we arrived that first night late at night in the pitch dark and could not find our hotel. Ken was useless, as was the schematic map we had from the hotel. In the end, we had to call the hotel and have them come rescue us. It turned out we were only a few blocks from the hotel, but the street didn’t go through. The only way was to go around in a large semi-circle to actually arrive there. We were staying in Maipú near the city of Mendoza and in the heart of the Argentine wine country. It was pretty rural, even right in town, which was part of what made finding it difficult.

The reason we were pulling in so long after sunset was that the border crossing was a bureaucratic nightmare with at least four checkpoints and then a crazy lineup of cars where you had to see another four people each armed with new forms and stamps. It was different coming and going, but we knew on the way back to count on at least three hours to get through it all.

On the way back to Chile, we weren’t in nearly as much of a rush to get across, so we actually took some photos and stopped to see the highest peak in the Americas, Aconcagua, at 6982 meters (just shy of 23,000 ft). Unfortunately, the weather was not as clear as on the way over, so the top of the peak was obscured under clouds.

Still, we hiked about 30 minutes to get back to a viewing point, hoping that the clouds might clear out in the meantime. (They didn’t.) Nevertheless, it was lovely walking and the landscape was really gorgeous in spite of the cloudy skies. We decided to go on our little hike on the spur of the moment, so I wasn’t exactly wearing the right footwear, (see me by the Aconcagua sign!), but it was worth it.

The drive on the Chilean side is much steeper than its Argentine counterpart, with no less than 29 hairpin turns. There is an enormous amount of truck traffic on the road, but luckily they have to go so slowly, both up and down, that getting by them is not much of a problem. Looking at Ken on these turns was pretty comical, though we didn’t think to take a picture of him until we were almost done.

We headed straight across Chile, bound for the quirky town, Valparaíso, on the Chilean coast. (See the post for “Valpo” coming soon!) Just about the time we were ready for some kind of roadside stand, we happened across a town festival in (or near) San Felipe, about halfway across Chile. We decided to stop at first because there were lots of charming men on horseback with great hats and wool ponchos. I couldn’t resist taking some photos.

About five minutes after we stopped, though, a group of kids with drums moved through the center of town followed by what appeared to be the local priests (and maybe the bishop?), a cavalcade of saints carried on the shoulders of townsmen, and at least a hundred men and a few kids on horseback. The tiny park across from from the church had several tables of people selling things. And, we were relieved to see several empanada and churro stands too–we were starving! The empanadas that I had turned out to be one of the best I had in Chile.

After asking a few people, it turned out that it was a festival for the church’s patron saint, St. Francis. With a little internet research, I discovered later that October 4th is the day of his death. As the parade passed by the statue of St. Francis outside the church, many (but not all) of the men doffed their hats in tribute.

Our next big driving stint was several days later heading from Valparaíso towards the wine country in the Colchagua Valley. We meandered our way via charming country roads and the coastal towns of Quintay and Isla Negra (which, by the way, is not an island!).

What amazed us as we wound our way over hills and through valleys, was how diverse the scenery was. It was like each little turn brought us into a tiny ecosystem that was completely different: one arid, one flowery, one with pines, and another with fruit trees. In just four hours of driving, it felt like we had driven to several different regions! One thing that never left, no matter where were, were the ubiquitous poppy. They were added color and cheer everywhere we went.

This description, of course, doesn’t mention the coastline. It was stunningly rugged. We stopped in Quintay for just a few minutes to look at the rocky coastline. It was a glistening morning, where the sun was so bright, that I could hardly see what I was taking pictures of. We were treated to some fishermen getting ready for their day and a bunch of pelicans hoping for an easy meal. I’ll tell more about Isla Negra in my post about Pablo Neruda.

All in all, the driving was wonderful. It made me want to see more of the long, skinny country that Chile is. We drove in a fairly tight triangle, with each side equaling four hours of driving or so. With the varied countryside just within that perimeter, I can’t imagine what it might be like to see more beyond this tiny slice!