Diego Martin: The Valley Behind the Capital

Named for an explorer

The valley is named for Don Diego Martín, a Spanish explorer. In the 1780s, French planters and their enslaved workers settled here and turned the valley floors into sugar estates. You can still read the labor history in the village names: Patna, for the Indo-Trinidadian indentured laborers who came later; Congo and Sierra Leone, for the free African indentured laborers who settled there.

The waterwheel

River Estate was once the largest and most prestigious sugar estate in the valley. In 1835, a cast-iron waterwheel was built to power the cane-crushing rollers, driven by water from the Diego Martin River. It still stands across from the River Estate Museum — probably the only complete waterwheel left in Trinidad. It's the valley's industrial history in one cast-iron circle.

The villages in the hills

Diego Martin is really a collection of villages and neighborhoods: Diamond Vale, Petit Valley, Westmoorings, Blue Range, Bagatelle, Four Roads, and more. Diamond Vale is pure suburbia — home to Wendy Fitzwilliams Park, named for the valley's most famous daughter, Wendy Fitzwilliam, Miss Universe 1998. Petit Valley gave the country Learie Constantine, the West Indies cricket legend.

Paramin: the parang heartland

Up in the hills sits Paramin, one of the valley's oldest villages — settled by French Creole families after the Cedula of Population of 1783, and later by Venezuelan cocoa farmers. Paramin is the heartland of parang, Trinidad's Spanish-language Christmas music. Every December, the hillside parang festivals draw thousands: cuatro, maracas, and guitar bands, the whole valley singing in Spanish. If you're in Trinidad at Christmas, Paramin is where the season sounds best.

Faith in the valley

The Shri Ram Dhaam mandir, built in 1998, holds a 15-foot animated murti of Hanuman — reported as the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. The Christ Child Convalescent Home, founded in 1946, was the country's first children's home. The valley's religious life is as mixed as the rest of Trinidad, and proud of it.

Pan in the valley

The valley has its own steelbands — Valley Haps and Merrytones among them — that carry Diego Martin into Panorama every Carnival season. The panyards are neighborhood institutions: where the valley's young players learn, and where the community gathers when the season heats up.

The waterfall and the gateway

At the northern end of the valley, off North Post Road, Blue Basin Waterfall drops nearly 300 feet into clear swimming pools — a short hike in and a cold swim out, one of the easiest waterfall trips from Port of Spain.

And this is the practical reason half the capital drives through Diego Martin on weekends: the North Coast Road starts here. Maracas Bay — Trinidad's most popular beach — plus Las Cuevas and Blanchisseuse are all up that road. On a Saturday morning, the valley is a parade of beach chairs, coolers, and bake-and-shark plans.

What to see

• The River Estate waterwheel — 1835 cast iron, the valley's sugar history in one site.
• Blue Basin Waterfall — short hike, big payoff, bring swimwear.
• Paramin — December parang season; the rest of the year, the views alone are worth the drive up.
• The North Coast Road — Maracas, Las Cuevas, and Blanchisseuse, all starting from the valley.

Diego Martin is where Port of Spain exhales. Come for the waterfall or the parang, stay for the drive up the coast — and understand why the capital's weekend starts here.