Carrancas: dirt roads in Minas Gerais, and the sky at the end of them

Carrancas sits in the south of Minas Gerais, in the hills between São Paulo and Belo Horizonte. People come for the waterfalls. We keep going back for the roads that connect them — unpaved, green, almost empty — and for what happens when you stay out long enough to watch the sky come up.

Where it is, and why it is worth the detour

The town is a few hours inland from the São Paulo corridor, high enough to be cool at night and green enough to feel nothing like the coast. Its reputation is built on waterfalls and natural pools, which means the region has somewhere to sleep and somewhere to eat in every direction — unusual for country this quiet, and the reason a two-day loop here works so easily.

The riding

Dirt, mostly. The roads run between pasture and forest, climbing gently, with the surface changing every few kilometres: packed earth, loose gravel on the bends, and stretches where the last rain has left the ruts standing. Nothing here is technical. It is the kind of riding where you settle into second and third gear for an hour at a time and stop thinking about the bike at all.

The weather is the variable. These hills build cloud through the afternoon, and a storm you can see from twenty kilometres away will reach you in ten minutes. It is worth riding towards one at least once, for the light it throws across the grass.

What you pass

Long avenues of eucalyptus with the light coming through sideways. Pasture opening onto the next range of hills. Saddled horses tied up outside a building that turns out to be the shop, the bar and the post office at once. A painted shrine at a junction, the kind every road in Minas seems to have. You are riding through somebody's working week, and the courtesy is to slow down for it.

Staying out after dark

There is almost no light out here. Ride until the last of the day has gone, stop where the road opens out, switch everything off, and give your eyes ten minutes. The sky that arrives is the reason two of the photographs above are almost entirely black.

We are not going to pretend this is a riding technique. It is the opposite — the part of a trip where the riding stops. But it is the thing people remember a year later, and it costs nothing except the discipline to not head straight for a hotel at six o'clock.

Which bike to take

An adventure bike on dual-purpose tyres covers all of it comfortably, road sections included. A lighter dual-sport is more fun on the narrow stuff and less work if the clay is wet. If you are riding out from São Paulo, take something you are happy to sit on for three hours of tarmac at either end.