Qualla: Serra dos Cocais

Serra dos Cocais: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HVL, CC BY 3.0. The first settlers who cleared these slopes kept writing down the same observation: coqueiros, coconut palms, everywhere. The name Serra dos Cocais carries that observation forward into the present, even though most of the original palms are gone and the slopes around the villages are now planted with eucalyptus destined for pulp mills. The granite beneath is unchanged. Blocks of it, continuous and unjointed, form the backbone of this range, and radiometric dating places the rock at more than 600 million years old. The peaks rise to 1,200 meters in a landscape where 500 to 800 meters is the average. From a distance the Cocais look like an unusually tall ridge. Up close they are a mountain, and the small villages on its flanks carry a culture the surrounding Steel Valley urbanism has not quite absorbed.

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Image: HVL | CC BY 3.0

Serra dos Cocais: Where Cerrado Meets Doce

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HVL, CC BY 3.0. The range sits within the municipality of Coronel Fabriciano, about 20 kilometers from the urban center, in the interior of Minas Gerais between the Piracicaba, Doce, and Santo Antônio river basins. The range actually defines their division - water falling on the south flank head...

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Image: HVL | CC BY 3.0

Serra dos Cocais: The Tropeiro's Path

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HVL, CC BY 4.0. Around 1825, a Brazilian official named Guido Marlière laid out a road connecting the municipality of Antônio Dias to the Santo Antônio River near Naque. The road crossed the Serra dos Cocais at what would later become the village of São José dos Cocais. In the years that followe...

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Image: HVL | CC BY 4.0

Serra dos Cocais: Eucalyptus and the Company Town

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HVL, CC BY 3.0. The villages have been losing people for decades. Until the 1980s, the economy here revolved around small-scale farming: coffee, cattle, subsistence crops. Then the Cenibra pulp company began paying small landowners to plant eucalyptus on their farms, with the harvested wood ship...

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Image: HVL | CC BY 3.0

Serra dos Cocais: The Marujada and the Marching Dancers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HVL, CC BY 4.0. What the villages have kept is culture. The Marujada dos Cocais, based in Santa Vitória dos Cocais, is a traditional folk dance ensemble that performs marches and tributes for Our Lady of the Rosary. They appear on the anniversary of Coronel Fabriciano's founding each January 20 ...

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Image: HVL | CC BY 4.0

Serra dos Cocais: Rocks, Rappels, and the Two Brothers

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit HVL, CC BY 3.0. The sport tourism has multiplied. Mountain bikers, climbers, backpackers, rappellers, and off-roaders have all found reasons to come here. The Jipe Clube Vale do Aço, the local off-road club, runs organized tours and competitions on the trails. Climbers work the Pedra dos Cem Hom...

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Image: HVL | CC BY 3.0