I drove through a heavy mist up into the Espinhaço mountains in search of what Aleijadinho - the 'Brazilian Michelangelo' - had left behind. Most people are drawn towards these blue-tinged peaks for what they can dig out of them. It was profits from one of the world's richest gold strikes here that financed Aleijadinho's acclaimed sculptures. And two centuries later, mining still dominates life in this Brazilian state, as big as France, whose name, Minas Gerais, means 'General Mines'.
But I was pulled here by Aleijadinho's life story. I had heard it was 'perfectly South American', which I took to mean both heroic and tragic, but never far from surreal.
The same outpouring of gold had created my first destination, his birthplace: Ouro Preto (black gold), a town which began as a lawless mining camp, clinging to the steep rocks which held the metal.
Ouro Preto's miners set high standards in quaffing the national firewater, cachaça , scrapping with cutlasses and lusting after the Western Hemisphere's greatest congregation of prostitutes. But afterwards they fell on their knees before God, with a devotion that echoes in Brazilians today.
The miners formed brotherhoods, competing to commission the most spectacular church. Artists heard the call of patronage and flocked from all points of the compass to create barroco mineiro style - creamy white exteriors, the churches framed by twin bell towers and filled with a lavish explosion of gilded decor. Ouro Preto blossomed into a baroque architectural feast.
Three centuries later, Ouro Preto is still clinging on, and is so perfectly preserved that the United Nations has named it a site of World Cultural Heritage. Inevitably, the seams that for decades gave the world half its new gold ran dry. The population slumped from more than 100,000 (then twice the size of New York) to 20,000. But back in the Thirties the Brazilian President, knowing a national monument when he saw one, ordered that nothing be touched.
Its time-frozen appearance and its people's quiet demeanour make this a Brazil far from Copacabana beach or the Amazon, a reminder of how varied this vast country is. Not just Ouro Preto, but any of the three neighbouring colonial towns - Mariana, Sabará or Congonhas - are well worth the journey of between five and six hours by car or bus from Rio or São Paulo. Or you could trust yourself to taxi driver, Fatimo Valerio, who told me: 'Give me four hours and you will arrive rested and content.'
Rudely peeling bells woke me the next day, but the compensation was a view of Our Lady of Carmo, a church where Aleijadinho spent 40 years adding touches such as the lined face of St Simon transfixed by celestial ecstasy.
I was a guest at the Pouso do Chico Rei, a small eighteenth century guesthouse, where a night in a room with original furnishings and a severely sloping floor costs about £35. You may also make friends in the shared bathroom and practise your Portuguese, as both Elba, the 93-year-old owner, and her assistants, pride themselves in not speaking any foreign languages.
Luckily, they spoke slowly enough to give me the basic elements of the story of Ouro Preto's most famous son. Aleijadinho means 'the little cripple'. He was born as António Francisco Lisboa to a Portuguese mason and a black slave woman some time around 1730.
Leprosy struck him as a young man, 'but this didn't shake him in his faith - he knew God wanted him to sculpt', Elba's cook, Janete, told me, in a matter-of-fact way that suggested everyone should have such a sense of vocation. When the affliction claimed his toes and the use of his legs, he demanded to be wheeled on a wooden trolley into the churches where he worked. When it took his fingers, he had his tools strapped to his wrists.
Aleijadinho was f&234;ted and in spite of his low birth his work commanded enormous fees. But when the gold ran out, Brazil's Michelangelo declined alongside his town, eventually dying in the tradition of great artists, penniless and blind. He is buried a few yards from where he was born, a simple headstone by the altar in Conceição church.
That evening I wandered off into the steeply cobbled streets, perfumed by wood smoke, in search of entertainment. Ouro Preto is quiet, apart from the barking dog that seems to inhabit every South American small town. But I discovered that it is in fact home to several thousand students from the national mining university.
In tucked away basement bars, the devotees of the Escola de Minas couldn't have been friendlier. Over cachaça, they relished trying out their English on me, inquired after our coal mines and told me a story to rival Aleijadinho for magical realism. It was the tale of Chico Rei, after whom Elba named her guesthouse, the king of an African tribe sold in its entirety as slaves to an Ouro Preto mine owner.
With Chico Rei as foreman, the tribe eventually amassed enough gold to purchase their freedom. The official version puts the amassing down to the mine owner paying out minuscule bonuses, which they saved over many years. 'Not true,' said João, a 22-year-old would-be mining engineer from nearby Belo Horizonte, emphatically. 'The female miners kept gold dust in their hair, and later washed it out for Chico Rei.'
Chico's people went on to buy the Encardadeira mine, struck a lucky seam and soon enjoyed their own fountain of wealth. The mine can still be visited, but João's friend Dorotea warned: 'The roof may fall sometimes and there are also problems with ghosts.'
The tribe gave thanks for their fortune by building a church dedicated to Efigênia, a Nubian queen. (Checking up on the story the next morning I ducked into Santa Efigênia's dimly lit interior, and picked out wooden carvings of African-looking fauna, before noticing that I was being watched over by a smiling black pope from the ceiling.)
But by reverting to African dress and customs, Chico's tribe outraged the King of Portugal so much that he prohibited slaves from buying their freedom. Chico Rei is still a folk hero to poor Brazilian blacks today.
The following day I set off on the meandering 20 miles to the town of Congonhas, hoping to see Aleijadinho's most famous work, the Twelve Prophets . In a reverse of anywhere else, while the old gold towns are stopped in time, the countryside rushes towards 'progress'.
Today's mining is the strip version, ripping giant chunks of iron-laden red earth out of the hillside. Stopping for a view of the carnage, I met Gilberto Ribeiro, a stocky ex-miner in his forties. 'These mountains will have disappeared in 20 years,' he said, while we watched hand-painted lorries groaning under the weight of their ore.
I thought that might be an exaggeration, but that was no reason not to hear some of Gilberto's mining tales over mineira cooking, which was delivered to us with quiet mountain cordiality at a roadside stall. The cuisine has the weight of high-altitude food, but thankfully includes tasty indigenous vegetables such as spinach-like couve and quiabe beans. Vegetarians should not experiment with feijão tropeiro (mule drivers' black beans), which may be livened up with pigs' ears, tails and snouts.
'I worked on a smaller scale, chasing topaz with my pick,' Gilberto recounted, 'never dynamite - I've lost too many friends through accidents.' What Gilberto chased most was imperial topaz, which he was pleased to tell me could only be found here or in a town in Russia whose name was 'too hard to pronounce'.
But he had no Chico Rei stories of good fortune. 'In my mining days I never knew anyone who started poor and ended up other than equally poor or injured.' Now he is happier working in construction.
Gilberto's new trade is booming. One new development, not far from the stall where we ate, showed more of the changing face of Minas Gerais. Alphaville is an enclave of identical modern houses behind a high wall and a bored armed guard. The rich no longer try to spend their way into public respect or heavenly entrance, as in the days when they poured fabulous sums into putting up Ouro Preto's 32 churches, the colonial sobrado mansions of Mariana or the grandeur of Sabará's opera house.
They won't be likely to encourage another Aleijadinho, preferring their culture to come on satellite television or shopping trips to Miami. At Congonhas the morning clouds departed the sky on cue to reveal Aleijadinho's Twelve Prophets, standing guard life-size outside the deserted Bom Jesus de Matozinhos church.
In fact these figures, staring menacingly out over a broad valley, have faces not from the Old Testament but those of a band of mineiros that rebelled against Portuguese rule in Aleijadinho's time, for which they were all beheaded or exiled. Their leader was Tiradentes ('the Toothpuller'), commemorated as a patriot with a grand column in Ouro Preto's main square.
The rebel resemblances don't deter the half a million Catholic pilgrims who trek to Bom Jesus in the second week of every September to make promises and do penance. Finally meeting the Prophets after generous helpings of rebellion stories back at Ouro Preto and with my Old Testament knowledge a little hazy, for me the link with the toothpuller actually improved them.
All 12 carry messages, six of love, six of threat. They are eerily alive, petrified in mid-rant but still quite able to instil the fear of something like God into those who view them. At the same time, misspelled Latin phrases (taught to Aleijadinho by a local ex-Jesuit bandit) seem for some reason to breathe more life into their making.
The Prophets were cut by Aleijadinho when his leprosy was at its worst. Records say the pain was so severe that the sculptor would sometimes hack away at the offending limb with his chisel until his loyal assistants stayed his hand.
We can only be grateful for his perseverance, fuelled by his Bible and anatomy books and by the effect that these mountains seem to have in driving people to extremes. Perhaps it was the altitude, but I found that, despite all I heard beforehand, the grace, realism and power of what remains of Aleijadinho's creations does indeed still take the breath away. They are certainly right for this land of greed and faith.
Fact file
Getting there: BA (0345 222111) return fares from £429; Varig (020 7287 1414) to Belo Horizonte via São Paulo starts at £715. Trailfinders (020 7938 3939) has fares from £299 with Aerolíneas Argentinas via Madrid. STA Travel (020 7361 6185) has a return of £383 in June on TAP, via Lisbon.
Visas: Britons don't require visas.
Internal connections: VASP and Tram Meridional fly from Rio and São Paulo to Belo Horizonte; from £203 if booked from the UK, less in Brazil. A bus from Rio to Ouro Preto takes seven hours and costs around £9.50
Staying in Ouro Preto: Pouso Chico Rei (address: Rua Brigadeiro Mosqueira, 90; 00 55 31 551 1274) from £35 B&B per night. For luxury-lovers: the colonial Pousada do Mondego (address: Largo de Coimbra, 38; 00 55 31 551 2040) from £47.
