I got my bags back on a roll heading out there and I'm ready to go looking real good

in my passport photo.

Amateur Traveler episode 627. Today the Amateur Traveler talks about colonial

towns, churches, Baroque art, mines, ports, and national parks, as we go to the colonial heart of Brazil in Minnigerai.

Welcome to the amateur traveler. I'm your host Chris Christensen. Let's talk about

Brazil. I'd like to welcome the show Yergen Keller who is the co-founder of South America dot travel and

has come to talk to us about the colonial heart of Brazil.

You're going to welcome to the show.

Nice talking to you, Chris.

Great to be on your show.

Now, you pitched me the colonial heartland of Brazil.

You're going to have to put that on a map for me because there's no map that I can search for

that's going to tell me that. So where are we talking about?

Well, of course, the colonial origin of Brazil starts along the coast of Brazil,

where the Portuguese landed, but soon after they had populated the shores of Brazil, they got the order from Europe to go inland and search for the gold.

This was all done in the very beginning starting in Rio de Janeiro.

So the colonial heartland of Brazil actually is the hinderland of Rio.

And if you look at the map of today, it's the part between Rio de Janeiro and the capital of

Brazil, Brazil, Brazil, today.

Those mountains were thought to be the source of the silver and the gold that Brazil held at a time.

From there, in the beginning starting from the little port of Parachi, a little bit to the east,

southeast of Rio.

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