Brazil
Pedra Azul
A granite monolith blue with lichen, erupting from Atlantic Forest like a wave.
From a distance the rock reads blue, and the blue is a living thing: lichen, spread over granite that comes up orange or pink when the season and the angle of the sun agree on it. Behind it Pedra das Flores stands higher again at 1,909 metres, part of the same granite group. Up here the cold is the draw, and the coffee houses on the road below say so out loud.
Pedra Azul is a state park in the EspĂrito Santo highlands, about 1,300 hectares of Atlantic Forest around a granite group at Domingos Martins, some 87 kilometres inland from VitĂłria along the BR-262. The rock was nearly mined for stone to build that same motorway, and a decree of 31 October 1960 made it a forest reserve instead; the state park came in 1991. It answers to a second name, Pedra do Lagarto, the lizard rock, and the seven-kilometre approach road took its name from the same resemblance. Standing on the summit is a different proposition from walking the circuits: a rock climb, booked into a two-hour window from six in the morning, twenty-one people a day, with no register of guides kept by the park. Winter is when the state turns up, for the cold as much as for the mountains.
Couple
Take the eight o'clock slot and walk the short circuit while the light is still low on the rock, then hand the afternoon to the Rota do Lagarto, seven kilometres of craft shops, cafés and kitchens with the granite in view most of the way. Café Alto da Rota at km 5.5 opens Friday to Sunday and knows what it is selling: the food, the view, and the chill.
Family
The partial circuit is the one for children, a signed kilometre in forty minutes to an hour, ending at the base of the rock and two viewpoints. Book it early: entry is free but capped at 150 people a day in groups of thirty, all of it through the state's online portal, and while the new headquarters is being built the park has suspended group and school bookings.
- Pedra Azul reaches 1,822 metres and Pedra das Flores beside it 1,909, one granite group listed as Brazilian geological heritage.
- The circuit is self-guided and comes in two lengths, about a kilometre in forty minutes to an hour, or three and a half kilometres over two to three hours.
- The natural pools are cavities the water has cut into the rock, and reaching them means about ninety metres of steep stone with a rope handrail to haul on.
- One of the marked paths is the Trilha das OrquĂdeas, in high Atlantic Forest carrying orchids, bromeliads, ipĂŞs and cedars.
Speciality coffee and a slice of cake at Café Alto da Rota, km 5.5 on the road up, or craft beer and sparkling wine once the walk is behind you, Friday to Sunday from eleven.
The same road sells what the smallholdings make: Venturim's conserves, Dona Tereza's caseiros and Selah's chocolate, with the artisanal cheeses coming over from Afonso Cláudio next door.
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