Cuba Guide
Trinidad and Sancti Spíritus
Manaca-Iznaga estate
Address: Valle de los Ingenios
Opening time: Daily 9am–4pm
Price: Train $20CUC; estate $1CUC
A two-carriage train leaves Trinidad twice daily for the Valle de los Ingenios, a large, open valley that was once one of the country's most productive agricultural areas, dotted with dozens of the sugar refineries on which Trinidad built its wealth during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today just one refinery remains, but the valley's main draw is one of the old colonial estates, located at Manaca-Iznaga, the train's seventh stop, half an hour from Trinidad. You can also make the journey direct in a 1919 steam train with lovely old wooden carriages that leaves Trinidad daily at 9.30am and returns from the estate at 2.30pm. Tickets can be bought in advance from either Cubatur or Paradiso in Trinidad, or on the day at the station.
Whichever train you take to the old Manaca-Iznaga estate, the journey leads through a lush landscape with the ruffled peaks of the Sierra del Escambray visible to the north and stops at a tiny station platform that's two minutes' walk from the old house and tower, the main attractions here. Most people can't resist heading straight for the 45-metre tower, vaguely resembling a concrete rocket with its pointed, spired roof and slender body. It was built in the eighteenth century by one of the most successful sugar planters in Cuba, Alejo María del Carmen e Iznaga, supposedly due to a wager between Alejo and his brother Pedro. A small fee lets you climb the precarious wooden staircase to the top of the tower for views of the entire valley, a sea of sugar cane interrupted by the odd crop of houses.
Next to the tower is the Casa Hacienda, the colonial mansion where the Iznaga family would have stayed, though they spent more of their time at their residences in Trinidad and Sancti Spíritus. Despite one or two touches of the original decoration, for now the building's predominant function is as a restaurant, where run-of-the-mill pork and chicken dishes are served up on the terrace, overlooking a small garden. Over the road are the scattered dwellings of the old slave barracks, now converted into family homes.