This is the first of three days on the Caminho dos Diamantes — the section of the Estrada Real linking Diamantina to Ouro Preto along the Serra do Espinhaço. The Estrada Real was the network of royal roads opened by the Portuguese Crown in the late 17th and early 18th centuries to carry the wealth of the interior — gold first, then diamonds — to the coast under armed escort. The Caminho dos Diamantes, at 395 km, connected the Arraial do Tijuco (today's Diamantina) to Vila Rica (today's Ouro Preto), passing through the same villages and river crossings that now mark this route: São Gonçalo, Milho Verde, Serro, Conceição, and the colonial hamlets in between. Most of it remains unpaved. Today's leg is a day of slow movement through the Serra do Espinhaço's quieter register — not the grand colonial drama of Diamantina or the promise of Conceição, but the hamlets and waterfalls strung between them. The morning belongs to two villages on the old trail and a pair of falls reached on foot; the afternoon shifts south into Serro, the first city in Brazil to have its urban fabric placed under federal protection, where the main stop calls for lunch, walking, and a wedge of the cheese that made the region famous. The final leg threads a colonial chapel and a drowsy one-street district before arriving at day's end.
Departure from Diamantina at 8:00 am. Fuel is available on the way out of town before the route drops south toward the upper Jequitinhonha basin. The MG-080 — the same corridor that once carried diamond consignments north to the Crown's coffers — runs unpaved for most of this stretch, working through campos rupestres and quartzite outcrops at elevations above 1,000 m (3,300 ft).
Deleting this waypoint is permanent and cannot be undone.