Drive east and you see the same, an undulent landscape carpeted with buildings completed or under construction, roads thick with traffic, and a few forlorn patches of the original Atlantic Forest or more recently transplanted eucalyptus trees to break up the relentless jumble of concrete.
Though the camp was less than 2 miles away, getting there involved hiking up more than 2, 000 feet while traversing a jumble of steep rock and ice chutes, all of which required careful handwork.
The ancient, all-of-a-piece jumble of khaki fieldstone buildings, wooden shutters and half-pipe roof tiles is as spruced up as a resort these days, with no graffiti in sight or tumbled ruins or paving stones out of place.