Our next stop on Sal Island, before lunch, was to the Pedra de Lume salt mine. It's located on the eastern side of Sal and is located within a moon-like crater of an old extinct volcano. The bottom sits below sea level and seawater infiltrated the crater and then evaporated, leaving behind natural salt. It varies in color from white to bright pink. Mineral salt was discovered on Sal in 1833 and it became a major industry. Salt production on a large scale lasted up until 1985.

This continues to be a productive place, only now the salt has largely been replaced by tourism. That's what brought us here. Some tourists come to observe the remains of the salt production. We came to swim in the salt lake. Our local guide claimed that we would be swimming in "Lake Salinas." My position is that we were swimming in a salt pond.

Our guides said that this was the second saltiest water on earth, second only to the Dead Sea. The pond is 27 times saltier than sea water. They also had salt and mud packs, but floating in the pond was enough for us.

It hardly seemed like we were going to a lake for a swim as we started into the mine area. It was also a long walk on a warm day with lots of Sahara dust blowing.

This next photo is why it seemed to me that we were going swimming in a salt pond. See what you think.

The water was interesting. The water on the top three feet or so was about 70 degrees. But the water right below that was about 90 degrees. That seemed backwards to me. This was still a far nicer experience than the two times we swam in the Dead Sea. Here, we didn't come out of the water all crusted over and we didn't crackle when we walked out.

As we were leaving, I was tired and ready to go back to our ship for a shower, some lunch, and some air conditioning. Perhaps I'm getting older.