Le Valle is where there were many small sugar operations owned by Spanish families, now more given over to other agricultural crops, for several reasons.
Our guide, Rosie, was an excellent historian and a lifelong lover of the English language, so we learned a lot about the history of sugar production in the area, and countless other topics. The name Ingenious refers to a machine that was devised to press the sugar from the cane, somewhat like this one....
but made of wood. It was thought to be "ingenious", thus the name. Slaves operated the machines originally, as well as everything else (10,000 at one point), but after the Americans got involved and industrialized things, larger presses were used, operated by oxen.
The Americans also built a big factory that rendered the smaller operations obsolete.
We visited several former sites, including one being excavated by archeologists, who had uncovered these cooking vats...
and slave quarters...
and were restoring an original family mansion...
where the families would live during the harvest season (Jan to May), returning to homes in Trinidad for the rest of the year - they were wealthy, with large numbers of slaves.
We also visited La Casa del Diablo, a mansion (under restoration) owned by a very rich, and very bad, guy who built and sold homes and traded in slaves, thus the name. An Italian artist did the paintings directly on the walls. A son of our hosts, Carlos, who is in a restoration company, said the paintings are over two hundred years old, but they looked amazingly well-preserved, considering their age and the climate, both meteorological and political.
The owner died a horror movie death, and the older locals think the place is haunted. In brief, his wife hired a slave to kill him, the slave freaked and only shot him in the leg, but he got no treatment for it and thus contracted gangrene, a doc cut the leg off too late, he took two slaves into the forest to bury all his gold and other wealth, killed the slaves, and went back to the house to die, which he did, soon thereafter. Thus folks still talk about the buried treasure, and an image of the devil that appeared on a wall, reappeared after being wiped out, and only finally disappeared after they tore the wall down. It has not as yet reappeared on the restoration wall, so far as is known.
On a lighter note, we had an excellent goat lunch at another former Ingenios home...
Trinidad 10
and finished the tour with a stop at a family pottery operation.
Trinidad 11
This guy looked to be doing fresco work on a terra cotta relief.
We happened to take our binocs along, and got lucky with a few sitings, one of a hummingbird, who sat and posed for us for quite a while. Again, the guide said it was a rare sighting for her.
We again did a sundown stroll (Caribbean in the far background)...
but this time I climbed the Convent Tower for some rooftop shots.
We finished the day with a nice dinner at a restaurant we chose for its name - the same as that of our good friend/favorite shirttail relative.
Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Trinidad
No comments:
Post a Comment