Around town artisan shops, most specializing in handmade furniture or sweet treats like doce de leite, a local caramel, dot the tranquil streets.

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Vale Do Rio Doce trades for 14 times expected 2004 earnings, but just under eight times the consensus forecast for 2005 earnings per share.

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No wonder that Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, a big Brazilian iron-ore producer, is buying Inco, one of the two Canadian nickel firms gobbled up in recent deals.

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Last year Votorantim's caution proved a liability when it was outbid by an energetic rival in the privatisation of Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, a state-owned mining and transport giant.

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Brazil's Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (nyse: RIO - news - people ), which mines iron ore, nickel and copper, among other things, has risen seventeenfold since 2003.

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Upstream producers such as Brazil's Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), the world's largest producer of iron ore and pellets, are trying to get into the business of making quality steel.

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Pangaro likes Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (nyse: RIO - news - people ), known as CVRD, a mining and metals giant that benefited from a 71% increase in iron ore prices last year and a 19% rise this year.

FORBES: Stepping South Of The Border

Back on the train and continuing north, at Prado station is the Iglesia Los Doce Apostoles (Church of the Twelve Apostles), and moments later just after Hospital station on the right is the Cementerio de San Pedro, containing a remarkable number of extravagant tombstones, sepulchral chapels and mausoleums.

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