August 6,

Welcome to Belo Horizonte, Brazil !!! I forgot to mention where we are in yesterday’s blog. We were awake by 0630, but not really up and about until 0800. Our new place was quiet and nicely dark through the night. It is a huge studio space with a cabinet that separates the bedroom from the living room space. I only mention this because the TV swivels in the middle of the cabinet so you could watch it in the living room or the bedroom, which I find kind of cool(even though we don’t watch TV in bed). We had Muesli, yogurt, and I had some of the self-ground peanut butter we made last night😊.

We set out by 0930 because I needed coffee!!🥱 Jeff had found a place, Cafeteria Santiago, which has their own coffee farm six hours drive from here. I had seen online which specialty coffee I wanted to try, out of ten they had it. While walking there, we took in Belo Horizonte, which has a large population of 2.4 million and the metro containing 6 million. It is hilly with many tall, multi-storied skyscrapers at least in the part of the city we are in. We also noted a lovely pink tree that is currently blooming on all the streets.

When we arrived at the coffee place, the lady spoke decent but broken English. She is the niece of the owner, she said. The coffee I wanted to try was available. Yeah! Jeff and I shared two cookies: one chocolate and one caramel, Brazil nut, as I drank my great coffee! We talked with the lady and a man (maybe her twenty something old son??). Anyway she lived in Santa Monica… “years ago,” she said. When we said we were from Kansas, she lit up and said her sister had lived in Ottawa, Ks – of all places. We talked a good bit and then paid 99 BRL for the cookies, my cup of “cafe” and a 250ml bag of freshly ground Santiago Special Red Bourbon Coffee. Yeah for me!!

With coffee in hand, we now had to buy some mugs as our place only has teeny-tiny espresso glasses. Jeff will need one for his hot chocolate. No luck on the mugs, so we went to a grocery store and found quite a bit of other stuff on our list. We took this all back to our place and unloaded it. Then we went back out to the big municipal park. When we arrived, a placard said the park was “inaugurated on Sept. 26,1897”! Also it read that the park “is the oldest environmental heritage in Belo Horizonte,” and “originally had an area of 600,000 m²” (or 0.232 mile²). Now the space is 182,000 m² (or 0.07 mile²). The map showed the park to have three small lakes. It was a lovely park – a nice space, with lots of birds (a striking one was a white and black Masked Water Tyrant) and ducks; and big trees that were ID’d, including the blooming pink flowered one…called a Trumpet Tree (Handroanthus impetiginosa). Many people were enjoying the space.

From the park, we went on a walkabout and found Santuario Sao Jose, which is Saint Joseph Sanctuary – a Catholic Church. It was visually stunning outside and inside! A cornerstone proclaimed it was “founded in 1900”, having been built in 1902 to 1910, though, per Wikipedia. It was busy with worshippers, but not a service. When we left we found a lunch place, called Pop Kid. It was a buffet style(with roasted leg of lamb), but had lots of salad options as well. After you obtained your stuff you weighed your plate and were charged accordingly. It was tasty and cost us 87.71 BRL, or $17.21.

With our tummy full, we found “Asian Marts row,” and one of the shops had a couple of plastic mugs that we bought along with some kids scissors (something every kitchen should have but ours didn’t). Now we went back to our place. We ended up getting over 15,000 steps with lots of elevation changes so we burned off lunch calories for sure. We had a snack supper of cheese and some bread. It was a good day exploring Belo Horizonte!