About five months ago, we went to the Chapadas dos Veredeiros. I wrote about the nature and the braziliarities of the bohemian São Jorge. What I didn't write is that we camped with 60 other people in the grassy backyard of a bohemian Brazilian that that had the physique of the Grinch who stole Christmas, and a leathery mustachioed face.
When I awoke on the first (and last) morning in São Jorge, I circumnavigated a smattering of tents to go the bathroom. Draped across a concrete slab that led to the kitchen was a 30-something, overweight hippie, with a spilled bottle of beer which had been overturned toward its former quaffer. A small brook of beer had trickled back toward his shirt and created a yeasty rorshach test on his chest.
We had another opportunity to go to a different corner of the Brazilian highlands a couple of weeks ago; as you have surmised, we did not camp. In fact we spent a great deal of reais to stay away from the center of town, and fixed well in a pousada with AC and a swimming pool.
Pirenópolis, the colonial city in the western highlands, was at once Bohemian and classy; Apollonian and Bacchanalian; peaceful and full of nonsense.
Aside from relaxing on a hammock, or snoozing to the whirring of a 10-year-old AC, we found more waterfalls, more wildlife (Nessa saw a toucan and a number of wild parrots), we were able to more freely enjoy the world outside what's commonly called the Brasilia bubble (though I think the Brasilia-orb, or Brasilia-sphere more in keeping with its space-age dimensions). The streets were made of the sedimentary sandstone, turned up during the ground-breaking of Brasilia and moved to replace the dirt roads nearly 50 years ago.
The pictures in this post are from rustic, classy Pirenópolis and the Brazilian highland countryside.
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