The reason for our stop in Belo was to then catch a train from there to Vitoria, which was to be a 13 hour trip, with the train leaving at 7.30am. We therefore decide to try and get accommodation close to Central Station, so it would be easy to get to the train when required. Once off the bus the first order was to try and get our tickets for the train. A task that seemed simple, as the station was between the bus terminal and our accommodation.

However once we got to the station, they were setting up for some festival thing and so we were told the entrance to the station we were looking for was closed. Due to this chaos, we decided to drop our things at the hostel first then return for our tickets and walked the long way around as directed. Although reasonably close to the station the hostel was up and down quite a few hills.

The plan was to get the train on Sunday and spend a little more for executive class (still being a lot cheaper than a bus!) however once we finally got to the ticket sales both, although a day and a bit beforehand, executive class was sold out. Only economy class was available. From what we'd read, it was definitely better to travel in the air-conditioned executive class, though after some discussion we decided we needed to go on Sunday, so economy would have to do.

As always we thought that seeing we'd gone to the effort of getting to a new location we'd look around it and had booked 2 nights. That gave us the evening and a full day to look around. The girl at the hostel had been very helpful and suggested things to do in Belo, the first being the markets. We had a little bit of time to make it before they shut at 6. It was like most markets we'd seen, however it was very limited for places to sit and eat, which had been our plan for a late lunch.

We then decided to have a 'home cooked' dinner in the hostel and so stopped for a snack of pastels and açai at a corner lunch bar before the walk home. Nearing the hostel the rain started, so we grabbed our rain jackets before heading to the supermarket.

The following day we woke to heavy and constant rain and were a little reluctant to go and have a look around. No, we've got to do it. Prepared for the wet, we set out firstly to some free museums in the cultural part of town.

The first museum, the Memorial Minas Gerais had some temporary exhibitions, one of photographer Sebastião Salgado, who had captured some amazing images of war torn places, slave labour, construction and wildlife in Brasil and abroad. The exhibition spanned decades of photos, all in black and white. You could tell he had endured a lot to capture the moments he had, and ventured to parts of the world we had never heard of or imagined. Some of the images were very raw and confronting, some inspiring. He is worth googling if you get a chance!

The other exhibitions weren't really our cup of tea. The museum also had some history of the area, presented in sections of the people, arts and industry of the state of Minas Gerais. The museum was brilliantly set up. It was quite interactive and included a lot of film and audio. The only problem was that was all in Portuguese only so we missed a lot of the content.

Beside the Memorial was the was the Museu das Minas e do Metal, which seemed promising. We spent quite a while looking around it, as it had a amazing collection of gemstones presented in glass cabinets, through telescopes and even as holograms. After studying them for a while, we found the mining section and the history associated with mining in the area. There was some English, though once again the crux of it Portuguese, particularly video and audio, so we only got limited details. Once again though, the museum was really well done.

Fergus somehow managed to find a staff member who spoke English and wanted to tell him all about the mining process. Fergus didn't have the heart to tell him that he's in mining and knows it all, as he guessed the guy was pretty happy with himself that he could help out these tourist by explaining it all in somewhat broken English.

We exited to more rain, but decided we should checkout the park (another recommended attraction). When we got to it we stumbled upon another exhibition of the photographer that we'd just seen and as it was free thought we'd have a look. This exhibition wasn't so confronting, as it was mostly wildlife and landscape images from Antarctica and Patagonia and tribal images from PNG and Brasil.

The park itself appeared to be closed, as they were setting up for possibly the same festival as outside the station. Time to get the bus home to cook another meal and then have an early night before our train trip!

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