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Published: January 18th 2009
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Jo must have been up early but I slept through until breakfast at 0800. We sorted out our bill with Elizabet and by 0900 we headed out to get information about a tourist train to Valle de los Ingenios (Valley of the Sugar Mills), only to find the train was out of service. Lonely Planet recommended the local train as an alternative but it too was broken - as was one of the bridges on the way to the valley - a result of the recent hurricanes. We found a travel agency that did half day CUC9 tours by van and signed up. We were collected 30 minutes later and headed northeast to Mirador de la Loma del Puerto, a lookout over the valley. The hurricane had destroyed alot of the vegetation but it was still photo worthy and we spent fifteen minutes there talking to our guide and watching the shopkeeper from the lookout play dominos.
15 minutes further into the valley we arrived in Iznaga and the estate of Manaca Iznaga, the 18th century farm that was owned by a slave trader - Pedro Iznaga. Next to the farmhouse (now a restaurant) was a 44 metre tower offering
The Farmhouse
Manaca Iznaga views of the valley that used to be used by the owners to keep an eye on their slaves in the sugar fields. Whilst our van contained only us and four Austrians, we were amongst no less than four package tour buses and as a result we were surrounded by locals selling crafts. We managed to avoid most of them and had a pleasant time wandering around for 30 minutes. We returned to our van that had been repositioned outside a house where the owner was crushing sugar cane in an old machine and producing CUC1 drinks with or without rum. The drink was sweet but quite drinkable and left quite a rush in my head! On the way back into Trinidad we stopped at a pottery shop that was of no interest to either of us.
Lunch was an El Rapido pizza each and we also found time to stop at a bar for a daiquiri for Jo and a Bucanero for me. We returned to our casa for the final time and said our goodbyes to Elizabet and family - even Bedo the dog came in off the street to say hooray. Elizabet’s dad flagged down a
Rooster
Manaca Iznaga passing horse and cart to take us to the bus station.
We pulled out of Trinidad on time at 1530 and as the busy centre of town turned into the suburbs and then the beach, I realised I was really going to miss Trinidad.
After stopping at Cienfuegos for ten minutes we arrived at Santa Clara at 1830 and were met at the bus terminal by Anneris - another of Nicolas’ mates. He sorted us out with a taxi and led the way on his motorbike. We signed in at the casa (CUC20) and were offered dinner (CUC8). About half an hour later we sat down to a large meal of perfectly roasted chicken with crispy skin, sweet potato chips, rice, salad and fruit finished off nicely with ice-cream for Jo and coffee for me.
The news was on TV and warned of a class 2 hurricane due to hit Cuba within the next 48 hours. Most of the hour long bulletin was devoted to it but the graphics we saw had the eye of the storm passing a few hundred kilometres east of Santa Clara and Havana. We went to bed early expecting heavy rain for
the remainder of the trip.
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