Left off my last post before I got through the travel blues and got to the actual part about being in Brazil.  Lest anyone think that all I’m going to do is complain about this trip, just remember — I’ve stopped writing about my annoyances in Egypt, but they are plentiful.

I arrived on Thursday in Belo Horizonte basically in time to go to my hotel room, take a shower and wash the sludge off, and pass out for a couple of hours.  Afterwards, I trudged back over to the hotel where the group was staying and met up with Natalie and a couple of others and we went to dinner at a place called “b.a.r.”  Very original.  It was an early night for Brazil, meaning that when I started falling asleep at the table at 11:30, I was put in a cab back to my hotel while everyone else stayed — depending on who I talk to — either another 5 minutes or another 45.

The next day, before the Great Cell Phone Trek of 2010, I went with the group to watch a rehearsal by Grupo Corpo, who are, according to Joe (who has opinions in much the same way I do — with the little trademark symbol afterwards: “Opinions by Joe™”) the best experimental dance company in the world.  As I do not follow dance, experimental, contemporary or otherwise, I am not qualified to offer an opinion on that, but I will say that I wish I had been able to take photos of the dancers as I think they would have been hot neat.

The group with whom I am tagging along is on a seminar called “Arts and Empowerment,” and they’re basically visiting and working with groups who work in poor communities to bring education and self-empowerment through artistic means.  They started in Salvador–which I will get to someday, dammit!–and then went to BH, and now we’re all in Rio (but I’m not to that part in the story yet).  Anyway, the group’s blog is here if you want to see what they’re doing.

I had heard that Brazil tends to be pretty laid back about sexuality, which isn’t to say that when I saw two guys making out on the street in Belo Horizonte that it wasn’t an eye opener.  Hel-lo!

Anyway, after an amazing performance and a lunch at a comida a kilo (cafeterias here tend to sell food by weight.  Neat concept), Natalie and I then embarked on the Great Cell Phone Trek of which you already know.

Saturday we left BH on the bumpy ride down to Tiradentes, which is one of the old colonial mining towns in the mountains of resource-rich Minas Gerais.  The name of the state literally means “general mines,” which is a throwback to the past when it was exploited primarily for gold reserves.  Mineiro food is also considered one of the best in Brazil, and Natalie and Joe took the group (and me) to dinner at Tragaluz, a phenomenal restaurant that does something on the order of new-mineiro food.  I had a dish featuring the titular “tragaluz,” a guinea hen, introduced by the slaves who were brought from Angola.  Tastes just like chicken.

Triadentes is a lovely town to just walk around — it’s quaint, although, like everywhere in Minas, everything manages to be uphill from everything else (in both directions).  I bought a couple of small jars of a local delicacy–dulce de leite–and a nice bottle of gold cachaca, the sugar-cane liquor that is a standard in Brazil.  Other than that, I took lots of photos…

There are more over on Flickr.

The title of the post, by the way, comes from our departure from Tiradentes yesterday.  I needed to pay my bill at the pousada (bed and breakfast) where we were staying, and I knew who the guy was who takes care of that stuff, but he was nowhere to be found.  Finally, one of the cleaning ladies asked me if I needed help with something, and in my perfectly fluent Portunhol (that would be: Spanish with a Brazilian accent with the four Portuguese words I know thrown in for good effect), I managed to convey that I needed to pay my bill and that, “Estou procurando por … o homem que trabalha aqui … o homem com a camisa vermelha?”  (“I’m looking for … the guy who works here … the guy in the red shirt?”)

I’ve decided that O homem com a camisa vermehla should be the title of a mystery novel.

At any rate, I need to get ready to go meet everyone for our tour of Rio’s historic center.  Ate logo!