Pedra de Lume salt ponds
Salinas de Pedra de Lume
Interesting facts
- The crater is estimated to hold more than 50 million tonnes of rock salt.
- At the height of the trade, Sal exported more than 30,000 tonnes of salt a year, with Brazil as its main buyer.
- The aerial ropeway that carried salt from the crater down to the harbour was installed by the French company Salins du Cap Vert in 1921.
- The salt pans lie inside an extinct volcano only about 1.5 kilometres from the sea, an unusual setting for a salina.
- In 2013 the salinas were chosen as one of the Seven Wonders of Cape Verde.
- The Pedra de Lume salinas have been put forward by Cape Verde for UNESCO World Heritage status.
- The village beside the crater is associated with the morna singers Ildo Lobo and Mirri Lobo, two well-known voices of Cape Verdean music.
Why it is worth it
On the east coast of Sal, the island in Cape Verde named for salt, the floor of an extinct volcanic crater is laid out as a patchwork of shallow evaporation pans. Seen from the crater rim, the salinas of Pedra de Lume form a mosaic of white crusts and still, pale water ringed by brown volcanic slopes, only a short walk inland from the sea. According to geologists, the brine does not seep in sideways from the ocean but rises from deep below the ground.
The salt made the island's history. Large-scale extraction began at the end of the 18th century, when Manuel António Martins started working the ponds in 1796 and founded the settlement of Pedra de Lume beside them. To get the salt out of the enclosed crater, a tunnel was driven through its wall in 1804, and a port was built on the shore below in 1805. For most of the 19th century salt was shipped from here, much of it to Brazil, until Brazil banned imported salt in 1887 and the trade collapsed. In the 1920s a French company, Salins du Cap Vert, revived production and installed an aerial ropeway about 1,100 metres long to carry salt from the crater to the harbour.
Production today is small and aimed mainly at cosmetics and thalassotherapy, and the brine in some of the pools is so dense that a swimmer floats without effort. Together with the nearby mountain of Cagarral, the crater and its salinas form a protected landscape of about 8 square kilometres. The village of Pedra de Lume, with its small harbour, chapel and lighthouse, lies on the coast just below.
Getting there
The salt crater lies beside the village of Pedra de Lume, about 5 km east of Espargos, the main town of Sal. Amílcar Cabral International Airport (SID), the island's international airport, is about 6 km away.
On these lists
16.77260, -22.90090per Wikidata