After spending a night and the following morning in Ouro Preto, we headed for a smaller town of Mariana, about 10 km away. On the way, however, we got off the bus to visit a gold mine. This mine is privately owned and the owners charge R$17 for entrance, which includes a trip 100 m down into the mine on a little rail car, an brief excursion there, and a trip back. The mine is supposed to be 300 meters deep, but most of it is flooded. At the 100 m level where we were there was a lake with remarkably transparent water, to a point that you would have to look carefully to see where the water begins. (Maybe that was just because it was dark.) The reflection of the walls in the water gave me some pretty low-light photos (one of those cases where the photo looks better than it did to the naked eye). In this case, not only allowed us to photograph but advertized it as a feature of the excursion. Of course, they don’t mention that your pictures would be useless unless you are using a tripod or have a camera with a swiveling body that can be rested on the floor.