After the crazy carnival, I took a rest day in Sao Paulo and then took the bus for 10 hours to Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais, the state where I had also celebrated carnival. 

Bus trip with flat tire

But the bus ride was suddenly interrupted because our bus had a flat tire and we had to wait over an hour for a new one. Finally, in the evening I arrived at my hostel. I had no reservation for my hostel and it was already late. Nobody opened the door for me. So I walked to another hostel, which luckily was still open since it was in the more lively bar area of the city. Belo Horizonte is the city with the highest number of bars/m².

Trip to a national park

With 2 other Brazilians from my hostel I made a trip to some waterfalls in the national park Serra do Cipo. It was good that one of them had a rental car. We hiked and swam into one of the many small natural pools.

Meeting an old friend

In the evening I met up with my female friend Isabella, whom I met in 2012 during an exchange program in Serbia. Together with her husband we visited a Bavarian pub and drank wheat beer in the middle of Brazil. Wicked! My fellow hikers were there too.

The next day my friend Isabella didn't have time for me because she was about to finish her studies, so she sent me her brother Victor, whom I had never seen before and he showed me his city. We visited a market, a museum and a park. And since the Brazilians can't get enough of carnival, there was an afterparty somewhere in the city (1 week after carnival). Easy! I kept seeing gays and lesbians kissing intimately. Belo Horizonte seems to be a very LGBT-friendly city.

Getting invited by a local family

Afterwards Victor invited me to his home, to his family's house. A very lovely family. For me the Minheiros, as the inhabitants of this state are called, are the nicest Brazilians. The mother immediately began to cook vegetarian food for me and the father was overjoyed to practice his English with a foreigner. Also the mother tried to communicate with me again and again, but unfortunately she could hardly speak English and I could not understand her Portuguese.

Victor & I met some more buddies in a nearby bar later on before we returned to his house and I could sleep in the abandoned room of his sister, who no longer lived there.

Sightseeing and trying local specialities

The next morning I met his sister, who picked me up by car from my hostel and we visited the church Iglesia de San Francisco de Asís, which you wouldn't expect to be a church because of its outer shape. Designed by the famous arquitect Niemeyer, the forms are wave-shaped. Afterwards we visited the Mineirão, the football stadium, where the Brazilian national team 2014 experienced one of its worst defeats, when they lost 7-1 in the World Cup semi-final of the German team. We visited a market where we tasted a local dessert called "Goiabada" which is made of guavas. Strangely the people here it this sweet dessert with cheese.

The next day I continued my trip to Ouro Preto.