Sal; Sunday, 19 March, 2023

I wasn’t so worried about the early wake-up this morning as I had a whole day tour of the island booked, with a pickup just before 9am, so I need to be up relatively early and had breakfast finished before 8am.

We spent about 30 minutes doing hotel pickups before the tour proper started, heading first to Kite Beach, where the eBike tour had taken us two days before, and then on up to the small settlement of Murdeira to take in the pleasant bay and Lion Mountain (two small extinct volcanic hills that resemble a lion lying down when seen from the bay in Murdeira). From there we continued north with a quick tour through the islands capital of Espargos and onto the weird landscape of Tera Boa.

Located in the north of the island, surrounded by a number of extinct volcanic cones, totally flat and desert like the area has a heat haze and shimmer that makes perspective stop working. Consequently you can see the reflection of the sky on the haze coming off of the land, giving the impression of vast lakes of water in the distance. The landscape also make it possible to take perspective defying pictures really easily and the guide spent a good 10 minutes taking photos of people posing on the top of water bottles or apparently balancing rocks on their little finger.

From the mirages at Tera Boa the next stop was the Blue Eye cave, another natural phenomenon and one that only occurs between 10 and 3. Down by the coast former volcanic lava tubes have in a couple of places collapsed forming sea caves, as well as a cavern in the rock, linked some 27ft below the water line by a tunnel out to the sea. When the sun is in the right position the combination of the sea water flowing into the cavern and light reflecting from different locations creates a bright blue eye in the centre of the cave – if you’re really lucky a loggerhead turtle might even swim in, though on the day we were there it was just the blue light.

From the cave we travelled a bit south to the town of Palmeira, the main port of the island, where we had a visit to a gift shop, before stopping at a restaurant for lunch.

The next stop was back across the island on the eastern coast and the volcanic crater at Pedra Lume. The centre of the crater is actually below sea level and due to the porous nature of the rock sea water filters into the crater filling it up to sea level. Surrounded on all sides by the rock of the caldera and with the sun baking down on it the water naturally evaporates leaving behind the salt that the sea water contained. For many years this was the primary economy of the island, in fact it’s reason the island is called Sal. To make it easier to access the salt lakes a tunnel was dug into the side of the caldera meaning workers didn’t have to clamber up and over the top of the rim to get in and out of the crater.

Today the salt lakes are still harvested for salt, but the lakes are also now a tourist attraction as the water has a salinity level 26 times that of sea water, meaning it’s impossible for a human body to sink in the lake, buoyancy takes over and everyone floats. The tour included a 30 minute stop here for us all to get into our swimming costumes and experience the really weird sensation of hyper-buoyancy, as well as the effect of being very buoyant on a lake with a breeze running across it, like sailboats you just drift across the waters.

After out float in the caldera lake we headed back to the bus for the journey back towards Santa Maria, stopping off on the edge of town to visit the botanical gardens, and to realise that – despite showering – we were all now gently encrusted with salt.

From the botanical gardens we drove back down to Ponta Preta for a stop in the same café bar we’d stopped on during the eBike tour for a sample of a local cocktail before concluding with the hotel drop-offs that got me back to my hotel a little before 6, just in time to have another shower to wash the salt off, and then a quick swim in the pool before heading down to dinner and then a night cap.

Before turning in I headed to reception just to see if it would be possible to keep the room a little later the following day as checkout was at 11, but the transfer wasn’t until 12:50 only to be told quite rudely by the front of house manager that checkout was 11 with no exceptions – she didn’t even check to see what room I was in, just dismissed me on the spot!