Rio to Brumadinho, Day 4
Though our flight wasn’t until 3, our vague ambitions of getting up and doing something productive on Tuesday morning came to naught. We slept late, ate a big Mama Shelter breakfast, and then hit the road for the airport at about 12:30. Turns out this was wise -- as efficient as our little airport looked from the top of the Sugarloaf, checking in took nearly an hour. A short flight brought us to the gleaming new airport at Belo Horizonte, completely overhauled for the Olympics. It’s a long, stylish building lined with appealing stores selling a wide array of merchandise, and we saw all of it -- twice -- after being sent to the wrong end to collect our bags. Nevertheless, we managed to get a snack, buy some roadies and a bottle of Cachaça and meet up with Bryan and Fabricio, our exuberant drivers. Bryan spoke enough English to make it clear he really doesn’t speak much English, and Fabricio not even that much. But they were enthusiastic and competent and we split up the crew, the bags and the beers and felt we were in good hands as we hit the road for Solar Maria Carolina, about an hour and a half away.
A bit of backtracking is needed here. About a year and a half ago, Dave and I saw an episode of Parts Unknown in which Anthony Bourdain visited a place called Inhotim -- a modern art center that’s not in the center of anything. In fact, it’s in the middle of nowhere near Brumadinho, a mining town in the mountainous Minas Gerias region of Brazil. We decided we really wanted to go to there. Our entire trip to Brazil was built around the two days we planned to spend at Inhotim.
And then, just eight weeks before we were to set out, a terrible thing happened. A tailings dam at an iron ore mine owned by Vale -- Brazil’s massive mining corporation -- collapsed, flooding Brumadinho with toxic orange mud and killing more than 230 people. Inhotim closed so the park could be used as a base of operations for emergency relief efforts. E-mails flew with the contacts we had in the area -- Maria Carolina, who runs the small farm/inn where we were planning to stay and Tiago dos Santos, the local agent who was organizing our transportation and Inhotim tour. We wanted to help, but there were no obvious channels for donations. Both Maria and Tiago told us that the absolute best thing we could do for Brumadinho was to come. And so we went. Inhotim re-opened about three weeks before we arrived.
We talked with Bryan in a combination of limited English and limited Portuguese on the drive from Belo Horizonte to Brumadinho. We learned that while no one in his family had been injured, he’d lost four friends to the tragedy. And the impact of the disaster was evident in the traffic -- a key road was still out of commission. When we got to Brumadinho -- a small working city with lots of places to buy and repair equipment and vehicles -- there was evidence of the orange red mud still visible, white crosses painted on the bridge through town, and signs and graffiti with the message “how much is your life worth” on many buildings (a reference to the payments Vale was making to families of those killed). It’s not a beautiful place (it has the scruffy practicality of many working towns and cities we’ve visited), but despite the clear sense of sadness and anger, it felt busy and energetic.
After passing through Brumadinho and another tiny town called Maria Campos, we turned up an unpaved lane into farmland and then turned in at the welcoming entrance of Solar Maria Carolina, our home for the next couple of days.
I had been chatting by e-mail with Maria for literally a year at this point. When I use the cliche that I was welcomed like an old friend, it was truer than usual. Maria (who’s Brazilian) and her partner Willem (who’s Dutch), their two energetic children and a big, friendly German Shepherd named Sugar run the Solar on a farm that’s been in Maria’s family for some time. They live in a rambling house on the property and have six bungalows for guests, set around a big kitchen/dining/patio/pool area. It’s very low key, beautifully homey and (barring some issues with loud goats and roosters if you’re in the bungalows down the hill from the pool) utterly perfect.
We chatted with Maria and Willen over popovers (Maria’s mother’s recipe) and coffee. They’re an endearing couple -- both terribly good looking, intelligent, humane, highly educated (they met at college in London), deeply thoughtful, sweetly affectionate with one another and only slightly earnest. They’re engaged in an impressive project -- working to create a community that thrives together by supporting each other’s agriculture and other endeavors. Dave had several conversations with Willem about the inner workings of powering the farm, the barter/buy approaches they take to sharing resources with neighbors, and the best method for getting rid of obnoxious wild boars.
After a lazy couple of hours around the pool (and several excellent local beers) it was time for dinner. We were the only guests that night so we ate at the huge slice of tree that serves as the table on the patio. Willem served us a casserole of pork with pumpkin and ora pro nobis (a local plant whose name means “pray for us”), rice and beans, sides of greens, cabbage and broccoli, and an absolutely delicious deep green vegetarian soup with pepper oil to drizzle on top. Willem recommended a couple of good wines and after sharing a shot of Dave’s cachaca, told some stories he might not have otherwise. It was one of the best meals we’ve ever had. And it got better when Maria brought out a spectacular orange caramel bread pudding she’d baked and popped a candle in it for Holly’s birthday.
After dinner we turned off the lights around the pool and admired the clear southern sky -- several of us took the opportunity to, well, see the Southern Cross for the first time. We had an early start the next day (early for us, I mean -- Bryan and Fabricio were coming at 10) so we headed back to our bungalow to enjoy the massive bathtub, the flower blossoms scattered artfully around, the homemade soap with coffee beans in it, and the homemade shampoo with coconut milk. (I am sad to report that the homemade soap and shampoo looked and smelled wonderful but were woefully deficient in the soaping and shampooing department :)
