Another day in Trinidad and we were off to the scooter rental place. Amaro gave us directions to one in town and we were there at 0830 when it opened.
A gruff rental dude with crisply ironed creases in his bright white shirt was unpacking his official stamps and notepads onto the one desk in the front office. He wasnt starting to serve until he was ready. Some girls at the car rental desk out the back had just been denied a rental car so they were referred to his desk to try to rent a scooter instead.
White shirt had their number….’No Scooter, you want to go to mountains, no mountains on scooter’.
The girls were adamant they didnt want to go to the mountains….’you try to rent car to go to mountains…where you go on scooter then’? he asked. They couldnt answer. ‘No Scooter,’ he said in a stern voice. The Operator was up next…better check with him if he approves of where we have planned to travel today, Rosie whispered.
He was Ok with our proposed travel plans…he just said ‘No Mountains’…we deduced that was the only English he knew. Passports duly copied, forms signed and stamped in triplicate…we were off.
First to navigate over the teeth rattling, boulder like cobblestones of the old town and onto a better road…second stop was to the petrol station, there was only a sniff of petrol in the tank and we had to fill it. There is only one petrol station in town and petrol was $1CUC a litre…expensive for this island!
Off inland we scooted with a full tank and the cool morning breeze in Rosies hair.
We were heading out to the Mirador De la Loma del Puerto. This 180 metre high hilltop lookout gave us the best views around over the flat Trinidad sugar cane fields.
Most of the sugarcane crop has been harvested and the fields were pretty brown looking. This lookout was tour bus central and the road was quite a steep climb up to the car park. Our scooter sputtered and broke down 3/4 of the way up the ‘mountain’! Serious! The Operator pushed it the rest of the way and parked under a tree in the shade…hopefully it had just overheated, we will take our time looking around.
The breeze on the lookout deck was bliss, a tour bus had just disgorged 40 odd people and we were elbowing for prime photo taking views…some people were not even looking at the views…just standing in prime photo taking positions taking in the breeze. Rosie hates tourists and has given up on politeness in the face of rudeness many holidays ago…she muscled in, elbows shoving and got her shots.
Rosie and The Operator apprehensively went back to the bike. We had given it a good rest in the shade. The Operator cranks it, it will not start. After a few attempts some locals came over and tried to help get it start…it would not start…one local gestured to go down the hill and try to jump start it…worth a try. Off The Operator went..Bye Bye waved Rosie…they laughed, off down the hill I trekked…The bike had not started…in the blazing full sun halfway down the hill The Operator gives it one last try and off she fired…thank God! We slowly and carefully carry on.
Next stop was a couple of kms up the road, the 44 metre Iznaga Tower which dominates the flat landscape for miles.
Tour buses are parallel parked on the narrow roadside and market stalls are set up everywhere. If you park in front of a locals house you pay for the privilege, our lad even had a parking vest on, he handed us a laminated voucher and charged $1CUC – no voucher, no scooter, OK? Stalls were set up around us selling food and off we trekked to view the tower and the hacienda.
The entrance way to the tower was through an alleyway of lace and tablecloths that were blowing in the breeze, all handmade by local ladies who were selling them.
Local handicrafts also lined the narrow alley, we busted through to the hacienda clearing to see streams of people climbing the rickety wooden stairs of the concrete tower.
It was hot, and, with the fore site of TripAdvisor who suggested ‘conserving your energy’ as the view from the lookout we had just left was just as good we decided not to climb with the multitude of others.
Founded in 1750 this sugar estate was purchased by the dastardly Pedro Ignazu in 1795 who became one of the wealthiest men in Cuba due to slave trafficking. The 44 mt high tower next to his hacienda had a 24 hour watch at the top to look out for runaway slaves. The bell in front of the house, which used to hang in the tower was rung to summon the slaves from the fields after a days work. On a more sinister note, the bell was also rung if a runaway slave was seen escaping….then the hounds were released….
The hacienda itself was big, palatial and airy, there was a huge sugar press out the back that was oiled up all ready to go.
Rosie and The Operator gave it a spin and Rosie proclaimed she would rather turn the wheel in the shade of the canopy than work out in the fields. The Operator then said bet there wasn’t a canopy back in the day…oh, maybe not then.
On the way back to the scooter and with stories of sugar cane running through her head, Rosie said she would like to try some sugar cane juice, there were a couple of little stalls set up in the parking area and were all doing a brisk trade.
$1cuc bought us two glasses and and a strip of sugar cane each to chew on. We handed over our money and the man on the stall disappeared out the back with a jug. Flies were hovering and Rosie was kind of regretting this move already. He came back however, with a full jug and poured us a couple of glasses. Let me say the glasses were scrupulously clean….Rosie took close notice of these things. There was no shade to sit and drink in so we went around the side of the shack to sit on the edge of the footpath and drink out juice.
Out the back of the shack we watched the whole juicing operation. First up a man was stripping the husk off the long lengths of cane and putting them in a pile.
The juice bar man was juicing as an order came through…couldn’t be fresher. He took our money at the counter, went out the back and took the lengths of cane and put them through a mechanical press, the juice leaked down a funnel into a bucket. The cane was shredded on the first pass, and most of the juice was extracted then. He then folded the shredded cane in half and put it through again, then repeated it one more time.
All he had left from that long strip of cane was fibrous leavings and a bucket of juice. The juice then went into a pitcher which he then poured into our glass at the front counter.
As for the juice, it was surprisingly refreshing and nice, not overly sweet or starchy, just nice palatable juice, nothing like I have ever tasted before, pure, cloudy juice with no pieces of fiber in it at all.
Laminated parking ticket duly handed back to the lad who was lounging in the shade under a tree. He nodded and didnt care which scooter we picked to take home, he already had his money. Off we buzzed with blue smoke billowing out the back headed for the coast.
The roads are narrow, straight and treacherous with potholes and patched up tarmac. Once again the road is busy with giant tour buses thundering past, trucks laden with people, horse and carts and people on bicycles. Then after a busy patch, we would have the road all to ourselves.
These roads too had propaganda boards on the sides of them every couple of kilometres. This one reads ‘Patria o Muerte’ – Fatherland or Death.
We were pushing our little scooter hard with two of us on it. We were looking for a lobster lunch on the beachfront wanting to check out our first glimpse of a Caribbean beach and see what all the fuss was about. First though we had some lovely little villages to buzz through, which were so charming in their rustic, laid back style…..tomorrow, we will take you there.
