topography of Vale do Café
For the visitor, being aware of the Earth’s subliminal language is an important sensitivity. Topography, the landscape’s raw material, provokes feelings, discoveries, mysteries, revelations with every step, as it wishes … There is a lot to understand with her on her journey through this territory.
Charming round shapes mysteriously unveil the Vale do Café. Nothing is obvious. It is ancestral land, softened by the wind, which knows the importance of discretion, to provoke interest in the traveler.
The highland of gentle hills, which at the ends of the Serra do Mar, close to the descents to the lowlands is more steep, does not deliver anything first. It keeps secrets, woods, fields, streams, news. And water, lots of water.
In the center of this altiplano, a great river crosses the territory, irrigating the region with its streams. The terrain becomes a little flatter when approaching the Paraíba do Sul River. The lowlands are generally small, always between hills, arranged in smaller or larger valleys.
They are tales of a thousand and one nights, or thousand and a mountain: the hills speak of the loving movement of the countless attempts of the earth to reach the sky. Poetic act engraved in static relief, and retold by the inhabitants.
After all, contrasts: Vale do Café is sweet, subtle in its outer layer, but strong at its base: it has a rock floor. A lot of granite and quarries reveal the strength that softness hides. And for charming surprises, it is often possible to find veins of mountain crystals almost on the surface.
Let yourself go, going up, down, around … and feel the beautiful movement of life.