Trekking

Back in the late 17th century, the first modern gold rush started here (gold from Minas Gerais helped finance Britain’s Industrial Revolution), but those early mines have been superseded by controversial iron ore quarries, the scene of two recent dam failures that drowned hundreds of people and flooded vulnerable river valleys.

Rising above all this are long mountain ranges home to thousands of rare plants and animals, some found nowhere else on Earth, many as yet undescribed to science. Tourism represents one of the few economic alternatives to mining and gives value, and a future, to these unique ecosystems. It is on one of these mountains, Pico da Canjerana, that I am hiking with guide and biologist Marcelo Vasconcelos.

As we approach the peak, Marcelo gives a shout of triumph and drops to his knees. “It’s here! Drosera graminifolia, a very rare plant.” I crouch down and see a tiny forest of green spikes covered in sticky red tentacles. Among these, two gnats have become entangled and are slowly being digested. Drosera, I discover, is carnivorous.

The day unfolds in a blaze of biodiversity. Marcelo has spent his life here, discovering several new species along the way. “I have a cockroach named after me,” he says with a chuckle.

Later, we drop down into the forest that cloaks the lower slopes, remnants of the vast Atlantic rainforest that once covered 580,000 sq miles of Brazil, a pre-colonial forest second in size only to the Amazon. It sent early visitors, including Charles Darwin, into ecstasies. An estimated 85% of that ecosystem has been felled, but a walk through what remains can still be an overwhelming experience: morpho butterflies flit through shady glades like animated slivers of blue sky, while marmosets whistle above and brilliantly colourful birds explode from trees laden with epiphytic plants. The rarest birds, however, are the elusive tapaculos that live on the ground in dark bamboo groves. While still a postgraduate student, Marcelo found a new species, the rock tapaculo. To his delight, and mine, we spot that bird and many others.

The park started life as a mission station around 1770 but is now a private nature reserve. Santuário do Caraça is also the name of the stone-built former seminary I stay at, which serves magnificent breakfasts (cook-your-own on the huge wood-fired hotplate). The real draw, however, are the maned wolves, mysterious animals that come to be fed at the chapel door. The moment when a huge maned head appears, almost within touching distance, around the lichen-encrusted stone balustrade is as fine a wildlife encounter as you will ever experience.

South from Caraça we negotiate roads packed with mining lorries covered in red dust and pass the valley where a dam collapsed in 2015, killing 19 people and releasing 44 million cubic metres of toxic waste into the river system. Despite this catastrophe, a second dam operated by the same company, Vale, collapsed at nearby Brumadinho four years later, this time killing 272. No one has yet been prosecuted. Through stands of eucalyptus trees, I catch sight of a valley floor submerged under lifeless red mud.

And then, as is typical in Brazil, a bitter experience is immediately followed by something sweet. We cross a mountain pass and take a steep cobbled road down into the gem that is Ouro Preto, an 18th-century town that is itself a product of mining, during Brazil’s first gold rush. I visit several baroque churches, every sculpture caked in gold, every ceiling alive with cherubim and angels.

The main sculptor was a local man, Aleijadinho, born to an enslaved African housemaid and a Portuguese builder. His painter colleague, Mestre Ataíde, depicted many African and mixed-race faces on the magnificent nave ceiling, reflecting the complex nature of a society where brutal slavery was endemic and yet mixed relationships tolerated.

Farther west, I visit the renowned arts centre and botanic garden Inhotim, then a bee sanctuary (another great breakfast), and an idyllic agro-forestry farm, all fascinating attempts to break the hold of mining on the state economy. There is also a late-night dinner in the town of Brumadinho, with chef Marcela, a wizard of the culinary arts who conjures up one of the most curious, and fun, dining experiences of my life, a tour-de-force of the state’s renowned cuisine. (Book well in advance for the intimate Alquimista Bistrô Secreto with tasting menus for up to eight people.)

Farther south, the issue of slavery returns. I visit a quilombo, a village where escaped slaves settled, synthesising a unique Afro‑Brazilian culture. After lunch (a delicious bean and pork stew called feijoada, the national dish) at Fabi’s restaurant, she asks if I’d like to visit the “farm”. This, it turns out, is the historical fazenda from which her ancestors escaped. We go with her elderly aunt, Maureena, who has Alzheimer’s but is always singing and smiling.

The farm is a beautiful two-storey stone mansion with whitewashed walls and blue window frames, set in a clearing of wild jungle. A sweeping stone staircase leads down into a broad yard “where the slaves were punished”, says Fabi. Her 99-year-old uncle, she tells me, can no longer bear to visit. “As a child he heard terrible stories from grandparents who had been enslaved. Now, if he comes, he hears screaming.”

Abolition came late to Brazil, in 1888. The country took more than 4 million captives, almost half the total transatlantic trade. In the 1830s, Charles Darwin, enraptured by Brazil’s natural wonders, had been appalled. “It makes one’s blood boil … to think of the English and Americans with their boastful cry of liberty … who are so guilty of all this,” he wrote. He may have been alluding to then US president Andrew Jackson, who rewarded anyone who gave an extra flogging to his runaway “property”.

Emancipation in Brazil did not end the suffering. Penniless, jobless and landless, the freed enslaved people descended on the cities, filling the slums known as favelas.

At the fazenda, the captives were kept in a dark cellar under the house. We all go in. Bats flit about. There is an old piece of timber on the floor that Fabi thinks was once the flogging post. Aunt Maureena laughs gaily.

Since Alzheimer’s struck, the childhood horror stories have been forgotten, the secret, perhaps, of her beatific cheerfulness. I follow her upstairs to the elegant colonial drawing room. On the windowsill is the nest of a kiskadee, a type of flycatcher, and the parent bird is perched outside on a fence next to the former slave pen. From its beak hangs a lizard, obviously dead. The bird, however, continues to hammer its prey relentlessly on the timber. Aunt Maureena, still smiling, wanders away, quietly singing Ave Maria to herself.

The trip was provided by Latin America expert Sumak Travel and Brazil specialist Viare Travel, which offers five-night tailor-made tours of Minas Gerais from £1,050, including airport transfers, birdwatching at Santuário do Caraça, city tour of Ouro Preto, quilombo tour, Inhotim gardens and some meals. TAP Air Portugal flies from Manchester and London to Belo Horizonte via Lisbon, from £1,082 return. A Field Guide to the Birds of Brazil by Ber van Perlo is published by OUP; A Field Guide to Larger Mammals of South America by Richard Webb and Jeff Blincow is published by Wild Guides