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DIAMANTINA |
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DIAMANTINA
, home town of Juscelino Kubitschek, the president responsible for the creation of Brasília, is the only historic city to the north of Belo Horizonte and, at six hours by bus, is by some way the furthest from it. Yet the journey itself is one of the reasons for going there, as the road heads into the different landscapes of northern Minas on its way to the
sertão mineiro.
The second half of the 288-kilometre journey is much the most spectacular, so to see it in daylight you need to catch either the 5.30am, 9am or 11.30am bus from Belo Horizonte.
Diamantina has a very different atmosphere to any of the other colonial towns. Still a functioning diamond-mining town, it is also the gateway to the
Jequitinhonha Valley
, the river valley that is the heart of the Minas
sertão.
The green hills of the southern half of Minas seem very distant in Diamantina, set in a rocky, windswept and often cold highland zone - take a sweater or jacket.
The Town
Even if it were not set in such a striking landscape, Diamantina's
history
would still mark it out from the other
cidades históricas.
The Portuguese Crown had reason to feel bitter about the gold strikes in Minas Gerais: it had...
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