The Chapada de Guimarães – one hour north of Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso – was the last stop on our journey. However, we made the crucial mistake to go there on the 31st of December.
Apparently, this is the ONE day of the year where everybody wants to go to the little city carrying the same name as the mountain range. While we got to see the top sightseeing attraction our friends had told us to check out,
and visited two minor ones, our plan was to go hiking the next day. Only that finding a place to stay for the night proved to be impossible, and that in a city that seems to have one of the highest ratios of B’n’B per capita.
Even so, nothing remotely within our budget and our expectations. It was kind of fascinating to discover that apparently New Year’s Eve commands double if not the triple of what’s considered an otherwise normal price. At one moment, we found ourselves briefly considering to pay 300 bugs for a room hardly worth a third of that. After a dozen or so stops, it turned out to be cheaper to drive back to Cuiabá, have a fancy dinner and to stay in a nice business hotel.
Coming back two days later, we found out that one hike started just behind a little shop selling local honey & sweets (on km 47 of the Rodovia Emanuel Pinheiro, to be precise), finding ourselves quite unexpectedly in the cidade da pedra – stone city – enjoying some stunning views.
La puce, die Welt and everything else 