Grande Sertao Veredas National Park

The park takes its name from João Guimarães Rosa's Grande Sertão: Veredas, the 1956 novel of the sertão, and one of its aims is to keep the streams and landscape the book describes. The veredas of the title are long streams that can form oxbow lakes or larger rivers, running through low drainage ground between sandstone plateaus covered in savanna, and gallery forest with many buriti palms lines the rivers. The park covers about 2,300 square kilometres of cerrado, dense cerrado, savanna and forest, and holds much of the upper basin of the Carinhanha River and its tributaries, among them the Itaguari, Mato Grande, Preto and Canabrava. Maned wolf, giant anteater, giant armadillo, marsh deer and the pampas cat are among its protected species, with rheas and ornate hawk-eagles among the birds.

Background

The park lies on the border between Minas Gerais and Bahia, in the Cerrado biome, and covers 230,853 hectares managed by the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation. It was created by decree on 12 April 1989, a decision revised on 21 May 2004, and its altitude runs from 660 to 900 metres, with average annual rainfall of 1,400 millimetres and an average temperature of 23 °C. Its aims include protecting the basin of the Carinhanha River, an important tributary of the São Francisco, and the landscape of João Guimarães Rosa's novel, known in English as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, and its protected species include the jaguar, cougar, ocelot and Brazilian merganser.

Source: Wikipedia, "Grande Sertão Veredas National Park"

What's there

• Veredas - long streams that can form oxbow lakes, the Santa Rita vereda among them.
• The Mato Grande trail and waterfall - with the Siriema viewpoint.
• The meeting of the Preto and the Carinhanha - the river that divides Minas Gerais from Bahia.
• Cerrado wildlife - maned wolf, giant anteater, marsh deer and rheas.

When to go

May to September, the dry season. Two days. The Encontro dos Povos do Grande Sertão Veredas, a three-day festival of sertão traditions, is held in Chapada Gaúcha in the second week of July, and walkers on the Caminho do Sertão, an eco-literary route on foot from Sagarana, arrive for it.

What to expect

Hunting, charcoal kilns and continuing clearance are the park's main problems, and some of its animals are threatened with extinction.

Nearby

Chapada Gaúcha, where the park has its headquarters, is the nearest town, and the Serra das Araras State Park lies in the same municipality.

Key facts