South America › Brazil

Minas Gerais

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Photographs

Places worth going

Canyon de FurnasDon't missOutdoorsWhat you are looking down into is a reservoir, so the water sits deep green between pale sheer walls and the whole thing is much bigger than any one photograph of it. I did it from the viewpoints along the top rather than from a boat, and that turned out to be the right way round - you get the shape of the canyon from up there, and you can walk between four or five of them in a morning. Go before midday. By the time the sun is overhead the water goes flat and loses the colour completely. There is a waterfall on the way in that drops into a pool so green it looks lit from underneath, and the lake on the drive back at sunset was worth stopping the car for.São Roque de MinasDon't missTownsA small town that exists as the front door to Serra da Canastra, and worth staying in rather than passing through. The park is the reason - the big waterfall where the São Francisco comes off the top of the chapada (plateau), and then the chapada itself, which is grass, rock and sky for as far as you can see with nothing built on any of it. The best bit for me was not the famous waterfall but the stretches where the river runs flat over bare rock shelves and steps down in a dozen small falls at once. Take a car you do not mind rattling, fill up before you go in, and eat in town afterwards - I had a bowl of feijão with torresmo (pork crackling) that was exactly right after a day in the wind.