Current Time in Uberaba, Brazil

Uberaba lies in the Triangulo Mineiro, the western wedge of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, on rolling savanna country between the Rio Grande and the state borders with Sao Paulo and Goias. The city has around three hundred and forty thousand inhabitants and sits at an altitude of roughly eight hundred metres, which softens the tropical climate. Its name comes from the Tupi language and is usually translated as bright or shining water.

Uberaba is known worldwide as the capital of zebu cattle. Indian breeds, above all the Nelore, were imported into Brazil in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and were developed here into the herds that now dominate tropical livestock farming across the Americas. The Brazilian zebu breeders association has its headquarters in the city, and each spring the ExpoZebu fair fills a vast permanent showground with the finest animals in the country, drawing breeders from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Genetic material from Uberaba, in the form of semen and embryos, is exported around the tropical world.

The city has a second, very different claim to fame. Chico Xavier, the most influential medium in the history of Brazilian Spiritism and the author of hundreds of books said to have been received from spirits, lived and worked in Uberaba from 1959 until his death in 2002. The city became a place of pilgrimage for Spiritists, with a memorial, a museum and charitable institutions founded on his example, and it retains a reputation for spiritual tourism.

Palaeontology gives Uberaba a third distinction. The rocks of the surrounding countryside date from the late Cretaceous and are exceptionally rich in dinosaur fossils. The village of Peiropolis, a short drive from the centre, has a research centre and a dinosaur museum built around the quarries where titanosaurs and crocodile relatives were excavated, and it welcomes school groups and visitors throughout the year.

The wider economy rests on agribusiness, sugarcane and ethanol, dairy, grain and one of the largest phosphate fertiliser complexes in Brazil, drawing on local mineral deposits. Downtown Uberaba preserves handsome buildings from the coffee and cattle boom, and there are pleasant parks, a municipal theatre, an abbey and a lively regional food culture based on Minas cheese, pork and cachaca.

Two major federal highways cross near the city, linking Brasilia, Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte, and the local airport offers connecting flights. Higher education is strong: the Federal University of the Triangulo Mineiro grew out of a medical school founded in the 1950s and runs a large teaching hospital, and private universities add to the student population.

Cattle, fossils, faith and farming make Uberaba an unexpectedly varied city and a fine introduction to the interior of Brazil.