Serra do Cipó - Guia

The Serra do Cipó - Guia app offers services and products divided into categories.

The Serra do Cipó - Guía Application has dozens of services and products divided by categories to facilitate the location in Serra do Cipó. In the application also has the history of Serra do Cipó, all the waterfalls, tourist points and its main information.

The Serra do Cipó is a geological formation located in the state of Minas Gerais, between the municipalities of Itambé do Mato Dentro, Jaboticatubas, Morro do Pilar, Nova União and Santana do Riacho. It is part of the geological province of the Espinhaço mountain range. Its geologic history is complex and dates from the Pre-Cambrian period, with its sandy rocks that were formed by marine deposits for more than 1,7 billion years.

The district is named after the main natural attraction where it is located, the Serra do Cipó, which has a great number of hiking trails, mountains and hills, canyons, waterfalls and natural pools of crystalline waters, as well as a large variety of animal and plant species, and the region is one of the largest biodiversity in the world. This is where the main gateway to the Serra do Cipó National Park, created in the 1970s, aims to protect the fauna, flora and natural resources that exist, and also concentrates several commercial establishments, hotels, inns, structured campsites and rural properties.

Serra do Cipó is located 90 kilometers northeast of Belo Horizonte, just after the city of Lagoa Santa, in the southern region of the Espinhaço Range, between the parallels 19 and 20ºS and 43 and 44ºW, in the watershed of the river basins São Francisco and Doce, being also a division of the cerrado biomes and Atlantic forest, the two most threatened in the country.

Access by car is via the MG-10 highway in just over an hour, and from the Belo Horizonte bus station every day there are several bus schedules. For those arriving by air is also easy, because of the proximity of the International Airport of Confins distant only fifty kilometers.

With altitudes varying from 800 to 1,700 meters, mean annual rainfall of 1,300 mm and about 300 days of sunshine per year, was in the pre-Cambrian period - about 1.7 billion years ago - occupied by the ocean, as verified by its geological characteristics, with the predominance of the quartzite formed by the consolidation of the sands deposited in the bottom of the old sea.

After the discovery of Brazil, it was in the natural path of the bandeirantes that in search of gold and precious stones they drove by the mining northeast and arrived at the village of Serro Frio and to the camp of the Tejuco, present cities of the Serro and Diamantina. There are still traces of a stone road built at that time, built by the slaves, starting at the foot of the mountain and arriving at a place called Mother of Water, above the Véu da Noiva waterfall.

Its historical importance is also reflected in the existence of archaeological sites with vestiges of primitive communities, as evidenced in caves and caves through drawings and cave paintings, estimated at between 2,000 and 8,000 years.

It is a region very rich in watercourses, especially the river Cipó, affluent of the river of the Velhas, belonging to the basin of the São Francisco river. The river Cipó, which is the most important water course in the region, is born from the encounter of the Muscat and Gavião rivers, and the Muscat descends from the Bandeirinhas canyon, while the Gavião, the Bocaina mountain range, both inside the National Park .

At the same time, it brings together a set of peculiar geological, climatic and biotic conditions, that allow the occurrence of rupestrian fields with greater diversity of the country. Moreover, this intermediate position, associated with special individual characteristics, has now become a recurring theme when it comes to the environmental characterization of Serra do Cipó, resulting in important reflections on the economy and history.