Explore Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo
DIAMANTINA, home town of Juscelino Kubitschek, the president responsible for the creation of Brasília, is the only important historic city to the north of Belo Horizonte and, at six hours by bus, is by some way the furthest from it. Yet the journey itself is one of the reasons for going there, as the road heads into the different landscapes of northern Minas on its way to the sertão mineiro. The second half of the 288-kilometre journey is the most spectacular, so to see it in daylight you need to catch a morning bus from Belo Horizonte.
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The Jequitinhonha Valley
The Jequitinhonha Valley
If you want to get a clearer idea of where the Jequitinhonha artesanato comes from, you have to head out into the sertão proper, and Diamantina is the obvious place to start your journey. Travelling into the Jequitinhonha Valley is not something to be undertaken lightly; it is one of the poorest and remotest parts of Brazil, the roads are bad, there are hardly any hotels except bare flophouse dormitórios, and you almost certainly won’t find anyone able to speak English.
If you need reasons, though, you don’t have to look much further than the scenery, which is spectacularly beautiful, albeit forbidding. The landscapes bear some resemblance to the deserts of the American Southwest, with massive granite hills and escarpments, cactus, rock, occasional wiry trees and people tough as nails speaking with the lilting accent of the interior of the Northeast. Here you’re a world away from the developed sophistication of southern and central Minas.
