Surrounded by hills and mountains with exuberant vegetation, Búzios is a place where you can enjoy nature. At the Emerências Reserve, you'll find the purest Atlantic Forest vegetation, with exotic plants, bromeliads and even the last golden tamarin monkeys in the region.

At the Tauá Reserve, you can see over 300 species of butterflies and 60 types of birds.

Búzios now has 2 APAs (Environmental Protection Areas) in its territory. Striving to protect nature, Azeda Beach was recently committed as an APA and it's entire region can only have, at most, 3% of the area as buildings. The Pau Brasil APA is a larger area that goes from Tucuns Beach in Búzios all the way to Cabo Frio. The area is the largest and most important pau-brasil (Brazil hardwood) reserve in the state.

At the Olho de Boi Beach, you have 50 meters of absolutely untouched beach, which caught the attention of the naturalists, who made this their point in Búzios. Other places of direct contact with nature are Lagoinha and José Gonçales Beach. And there is still the natural beauty of a village called Sana and it's ecotourism activities a few miles from Búzios…

Taua Reserve
Tereza Kolontai has been defending nature for almost ten years. She became a voluntary environmentalist and created Tauá Ecologic Reserve with her own hands. This is a cultural, archeological, anthropological and geological project. Her retirement (she used to be an Attorney General) was around at the same time as the ECO 92. Tereza had some land and wanted to sell it. When she walked around the area, a biologist told her about the biodiversity of the place. She had found a true ecological niche in front of the Malhada Swamp. The fossil beach was found by accident, during one of the digs. One of Tereza's priorities is to make the Reserve, with only four employees, into a c botanical reference center for scientific research.

Since then, she never stopped searching authorities and attending to environmental events. Last year, for example, she participated in the Universal World Show, in Hannover, Germany. The last meeting with environmentalists was in October, when she was at the Ecolatina, an event that brought over 15,000 people to Belo Horizonte. One of her major concerns is the protection of the shores from Arraial do Cabo to Macaé. This determined lady's day, who already painted and exposed beside Picasso in Paris, starts before 6 am, when she is already at the Reserve. For over 7 years she lied in an inn right next door, to make her work easier. She cut the grass and made paths. During the drought season, she bought water trucks to fill the lakes. She does it on her own, without any sponsors. She already planted 280 plant seedlings. 83 species of birds fly over her head, every day.

Tereza's passion is the bromeliads, the first plant to grow in the region. She defines the plant as "mother of nature figure" and, when it rains, the plant's cup fills with water and rare algave show up, which only exist in Buzios and in the Arctic Pole. It is estimated that 40% of the 1,300 species of bromeliads that exist in Brazil are in Tauá. At the Restinga Bosque, along the paths in Tauá, you can find an enormous diversity of bromeliads, cactus and exotic vines. It's a mysterious green maze, with many feeders along the way, filled with fruit to feed the wild animals. You can see monkeys, wild dogs, armadillos, agutis, and more…

The Reserve covers approximately three million square meters, filled with typical regional plants that sere as shelter for migrating birds. Birds, like the quero-quero, fly 2,400 kilometers to reach Buzios. According to Tereza, the nomads were the first environmentalists to cultivate manioc in the Malhada Swamp. Another interesting aspect is the fossil beach, which existed between 4,500/7,500 B.C. and was covered by the ocean. In the quaternary period, when the ocean drew back, the beach reappeared. Striving to recover some of the Brazilian culture, the environmentalist built an Indian hut with objects made by the guarani Indians themselves. Called Casa da Reza (House of Prayer), the construction used 10,800 leaves of the guaricanga palm-tree, taquaras and sticks tied with the tree bark. After more research, Tereza discovered that the Malhada Swamp was inhabited by nomad tribes and later by the tupinambás.

Another interesting project was Casa da Farinha (Flour House), where the original house dates back to the XIX century and belonged to a farm in the region. The house's transfer to the Reserve was hand made: all the material was transported and the house rebuilt like the original. As to the Casa da Arte (Art House), inaugurate in the beginning of 2002, it is one of the largest art displays in the region. Tereza personally got every piece of art.

The intriguing formation with windows started when Tereza lied in places where you couldn't see the sunset. She even molded pieces of bamboo to see the sunset of the imaginary window. When the fire happened, she took the place to make her window. Together with an artist friend, she decided to "frame" the sun and made, without meaning to, an astronomic Observatory, approved by the astronomer Ronaldo Mourão. 

To get the energy, the Praça do Sino (Bell Square) is being built, with the bronze bell that she got at the Ecolatina. The bell's sound interferes in several of nature's layers, says the environmentalist.

Tauá Ecologic Reserve
The tours are guided, if they are pre-scheduled; Entrance is free, but Thereza is thinking about charging a symbolic fee. The park is open from 8am to 6pm, so people can see the sunset.

How to get there: at Rasa, turn off on a secondary road, and drive three more kilometers along the dirt road.

Contacts: kolontai@reservataua.com.br or reservataua@yahoo.com.br

Website: www.reservataua.com.br

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