13.10.21 - Uai

Halloooo,

A rather late update this week as we're just back from a long weekend in Minas Gerais, the next state over, visiting long-lost cousins. It was a lot of fun - torrential rain basically every day we were there, but we made up for it with endless board games and an extremely aggressive approach to offering food, which I'm told is par for the course there (I was basically never not eating). Plenty of material for my humourous Instagram account.

Rain aside, it was hard to coordinate so many people, and the one journey we made into Belo Horizonte ended in ignominy as we accidentally left Patricia at a covered market, then went to see a big lake in the dark but had to pull the plug when we nearly got hit by lightning and I was almost apprehended by a police sting operation (long story, which we will no doubt chuckle about in the years to come).

BUT, yesterday we packed up and set off early and managed to visit the historic, extremely hilly city of Ouro Preto, via some wild foggy scenery straight out of Middle Earth. No rain, a lovely meal and plenty of photos later we got in the car and drove through the night (turns out Minas is absolutely massive), getting home to some very anxious cats around 4am.

In other news, I have booked to come to the UK on November 24th and fly back from Nice on December 5th, which will hopefully be enough time to see everyone. Gaby has decided not to travel this time, because of work issues and also a fear of being turned away as a Brazilian with no pressing need to be in the UK... but we're working on it so we can both come over for longer next summer. Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Oh and I've made a new compilation, and my phrase of the day is a fairly meaningless interjection they say a lot in Minas, and is (probably apocryphally) attributed to the English coming over to build trains, mine for gold etc and asking everyone "Why?" a lot.

Ciao for now,

Ouro Fred-o