Friday 23rd nov 18
We hire some bikes for the day and we tour the south of the island which is as flat as a billiard table with great straight roads. Great flat spaces with loads of cacti to start with. Looks more like Arizona than a Caribbean island. We soon reach the other side. Sea on one side, salt flats on the other, you can hear the musical tingling of the coral on the beach. The colours are beautiful. Great yellow mills are pumping sea water into the flats, once the dikes are shut, the sun evaporates the water leaving only the glittering salt behind. We pass the light house at the bottom of the island. Very scenic, such a beautiful spot we have lunch there in the shade of the ruined house.
Further along the coast we find the old preserved slave houses. Tiny little houses right on the sea, where they slept when not harvesting the salt. The big ships would anchored outside the reef and smaller vessels would come nearer and pick up the cargo. To identify the pick up point there is a coloured obelisk matching the colour of the slave huts. Only the red and the white villages have been preserved, there used to be 5 in total.
All along the way there are loads of trucks full of divers, just getting in from the beach, the sea looks so inviting.
The mountains of salt are visible for miles, sitting in pink water... quite a sight.
We have time for an ice cream before we take the bikes back. We had a good day... 36 miles in total, we’ll probably be aching tomorrow. Quick foray in the supermarket relatively well stocked, Jacqui and David are coming for dinner and I am cooking.
