Who We Meet
The People at the Heart of Our Crossings
Guides, hosts, and communities of Brazil’s Serra do Espinhaço
People are what make this part of Brazil such a warm and joyful place to explore.
The landscapes reset your sense of scale, the waterfalls leave you quiet in the best possible way, and the trails give you plenty of reasons to celebrate each evening. What stays with most travelers, though, are the moments spent with the men & women they meet along the way.
However you choose to travel with us, you’ll meet mineiros from all walks of life—farmers, laborers, academics, home-keepers, entrepreneurs, and many others.
Some may walk with you for days. Others you’ll meet once, in a doorway or around a table, and remember for years.
This page is a tribute to that wider fellowship.
Cosme. Near São João da Chapada
I. Mineiros
Minas Gerais is Brazil’s heartland, and mineiros are its natural hosts.
Easygoing, down-to-earth, famously chatty, and never far from good coffee or cachaçinha, they set the tone for life here.
You won’t see many crowds on our crossings, but most of the people you meet—flower pickers, hosts, drivers, guides, kids walking to school—will be mineiros.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a more welcoming group anywhere in Brazil.
Luzimar, near Pedrão
Lucas, Fazenda Santa Cruz
Levi. Taquaral
II. The Masters
The men & women who guide us through the backcountry are not props or add-ons. They’re residents and mentors—people whose lives have been spent living and working in these landscapes.
We call them the mestres: mule drivers, farmers, horsemen, boatmen, and backcountry dwellers who know the range as intimately as most of us know our own homes.
They read the forecast in a cloud and the soil in a footprint. They know which trail will still be passable after a week of rain.
When we move through their world, we follow their lead.
We can navigate the surface of the Espinhaço on our own, but we can only go so deep without them.
Dorico, Vale do Rio Preto
Valdir, FAzenda Santa Cruz do Gavião
Luis. São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras
III. Hosts
During crossings, the mestres show us how to move between places. Our hosts show us how people live in those places.
These are the men and women who receive us at the end of long days—opening their doors, lighting stoves, laying out meals, and making sure there’s hot water and café.
Their homes and guest rooms are where you’ll hear the local news, learn which festas are coming up, and begin to understand how time moves in this part of the world when you’re not on the trail.
Rooms vary, but they’re never anonymous. Each has a family, a story, and a particular way of doing things. By the time you leave, you’ll know which seat at the table is yours.
Breaking bread with our hosts—sometimes well into the night—is often one of the most memorable parts of a crossing.
Dona Maria, Conselheiro mata
Deco, Couto de Magalhães
Zekinha. Vale do Rio Preto
IV. Rural Brazil
Beyond the postcards
The vast majority of Brazilians live in cities now. Our crossings cast a light on the lives of those who don’t.
The Espinhaço sits in the interior of Minas, far from Brazil’s big-city skylines. Here, the countryside isn’t a weekend escape. It’s home.
During crossings, we pass through dozens of communities, many of them rural. From former mining districts to colorful agrarian communities, quiet quilombola villages to UNESCO World Heritage city Diamantina, each has its own character, setting, and reason for being. The cultural landscape can change dramatically in the span of a day’s walk.
Between river valleys and high plateaus you’ll find small towns, single-family outposts, and clusters of homesteads: places where laundry dries on lines in the wind, kids ride past on motorbikes, roosters set the alarm clock, and people can trace their roots back through the same hills for generations.
Mining booms and busts, droughts and floods, new roads and old trails have all left their marks, but the everyday rhythm is still shaped by weather, soil, and community.
Traveling through this side of Brazil often reveals more than the scenery.
Dona Maria & Family, São João da Chapada
V. Quilombola Communities
Guardians of memory
Across the Espinhaço, you’ll find quilombola communities—Afro-Brazilian settlements whose roots go back to people who resisted enslavement and made new lives for themselves in the backcountry.
Today, many of these villages still farm, mine for diamonds by hand, gather sempre vivas, and carry forward ways of speaking, cooking, celebrating, and caring for the land that might otherwise have been lost. Visiting them is both a highlight and a chance to reflect on Brazil’s history, the rhythms of life in the Espinhaço, and the country’s cultural landscape.
When our routes pass through these communities, as they often do, we do so with great care. These are living communities, with their own internal politics, joys, and worries. We come as guests, contribute to local economies, dine with our hosts, speak with our neighbors, and try to leave with a deeper understanding than when we arrived.
Diego (Right) and Gilsinho, Quarteis do Indaia
Barbosa and Lúcia, Inhai
Street Scene, Sáo Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras
VI. Colonial-era villages
Gems from a bygone era
Curralinho. Mendanha. Inhaí. Serro. São Gonçalo. Milho Verde.
If it starts to feel like every trail in the Espinhaço leads to a centuries-old mining town, you’re not wrong. Across the range, small villages still carry the marks of the diamond rush: steep cobblestone roads, whitewashed houses with bright doors, baroque churches, and squares built for processions, markets, and music.
UNESCO World Heritage city Diamantina draws most of the attention, but the settlements around it are each their own small universe. From elegant São Gonçalo do Rio das Pedras to quieter São João da Chapada, each has its own setting, history, and way of life.
Few places bring you so quickly, and so deeply, into the range.
Vesperata. Diamantina
VII. Diamantina
The City of Diamonds
UNESCO World Heritage city. Terminus of the Estrada Real. Former diamond-mining capital of the world.
Somehow, Diamantina (pop. 49,500) manages to be all this and more—a university town, a cultural center, and a place where history and everyday life still overlap on the same cobblestone streets.
Despite its significance, it remains remarkably under-visited, even by Brazilians.
Parts of the city feel like a museum, but it’s very much alive, set in the middle of the range. That balance—between historical weight and present-day life—is part of what makes it so compelling.
For many of our crossings, Diamantina is a natural anchor point: a place to gather, to celebrate, and to mark the end of a journey.
New Friends. Cemetério do peixe
VIII. Community Gatherings & Festivities
For much of the year, the Espinhaço can feel almost impossibly quiet. Then, suddenly, the whole range fills with music, movement, and celebration.
In a country and state known for revelry, the Espinhaço manages to keep pace. In small towns and villages, festas are how the year keeps time: from saints’ days and holidays to harvest celebrations, patron festivals, and wedding parties that spill into the street—the smaller the town, the bigger the festa.
Praças and churchyards turn into open-air ballrooms, with loudspeakers and bonfires, fireworks, food stalls, kids running laps, and elders taking it all in from plastic chairs.
As travelers, we’re simply fortunate when the dates line up. During a festa junina, that might mean standing at the edge of a candlelit procession or nursing a beer by the barracas while a brass band plays. During a cavalgada, it can mean plates of food and dancing in the dust with people you met that afternoon. In Diamantina, Vesperatas turn the historic center into a concert hall.
Regardless of the locale, the feeling is the same: you’ve stepped into something that was going to happen with or without you, and you’ve been allowed to stay.
