Trilho das Belas Vistas

It is next to the church that the trail begins, its starting point, but our eyes are drawn upward, toward the summit of the mountain range where the chapel of Senhora do Viso challenges our legs and our stamina— a silent yet clear invitation to the hiker’s spirit. It is not a matter of any miracle, but rather the hiker’s determination to cover the kilometers that leads the daring to set out, eyes fixed on the challenging heights, anticipating the magnificent views that are easily imagined. Thus, passing among the houses at the start and, then through the countryside, the graceful cluster of houses gradually falls behind, marked by the whiteness of the facades and the pointed spire of the church tower reaching toward the sky. Even before we reach the summit, the landscape reveals itself as magnificent, with villages rising on the hillside side and the Marão beckoning higher up, imposing in the grandeur of its granite, whose age is lost in the mists of time. But it is up there that one’s breath is taken away when the Marão looks us straight in the face. The undulating curves of its slopes, the many ridges carved by water, wind, and snow, form a magnificent tapestry of green and gray that in winter gives way to luminous white, which descends from the summit and fades at the foot of the mountain. From here on, the trail begins to descend, but the surprises aren’t over yet. At a lower elevation—though still very high—the Chapel of St. Peter offers a panoramic view. The hills stretch out in successive undulating lines, hesitating between blue and gray, where the linearity of the vineyards blends with the scattered dots of houses and olive groves, in impossible rhythms, in designs of extreme whimsy, with chromatic variations depending on the season. Thus, the spring green gradually fades into ochres and rusts, into sienna earth tones and dry greens, into warm sepias, into alluring browns and blacks, which captivate the gaze of photographers and all souls sensitive to the beauty born of the spontaneous combined with the deliberate. The end of the trail winds almost entirely through nature, amid the grove that flanks the dirt path, under the shade of hazel and chestnut trees, pines, and oaks, and the elderberry trees with their sweet berries and aromatic blooming branches. Closer to the ground, forget-me-nots, bluebells, and many other beauties of the natural flora abound. At the lowest point, next to the road, the fertile vegetable gardens seem to have tumbled down from the heights, sliding down the steep slopes where the vineyards defy gravity. The profound feeling with which this journey ends is one of gratitude that a place like this exists.