The Phoenician Saline di Trapani e Paceco, Sicily

Trapani salt pans from the town of Erice (Èrici)

Sicily is one of these impossibly fascinating places to visit. The topography is dramatic, the people are friendly, the food is sublime, and the culture is an amazing interplay of Greek, Roman, Phoenician, Norman, Arab, and Italian influences. How could you not love an exploration of the culture and food? 

The Phoenecians settled in the coastal areas centuries before Roman domination. Among their developments are the famous and still-operating salt pans, the Saline di Trapani e Paceco, on the west coast of Sicily.

Kurlanski (2002) describes the salt pans:

South of Trapani along the coast, earthen dikes begin to appear and a few stone windmills. The dikes mark off ponds, some of which hold turquoise water, some pink. The stone towers of windmills stick out from these orderly pastel ponds. The saltworks are built out along the coast until towards the south, deep leafy green fields take over, which are the vineyards of Marsala wine. This is one of the oldest salt-making sites in the world - the one started by the Phoenicians to cure their tuna catch, and after the destruction of Carthage, continued by the Romans. When the Muslims were in Sicily from 800 to 1000, they wrote of the windmills of Trapani.

Early in the year (in winter), the workers open sluice gates to let sea water flood the shallow ponds. As the summer develops, the sun evaporates the water. Workers flush the brine into different ponds, allowing the brine to become successively more saline. 

By summer's end, the workers expose the salt that has precipitated to the bottom of the pans and then pile it in multi-ton piles, letting it continue to dry. The tan shapes are roof tiles erected to keep out rainwater. We bought a half kilo of the salt at the museum gift shop.

This is one of the old windmills. From Kurlanski (2002):

The current windmills are based on a Turkish model that was adopted by the Spanish, who brought their windmills to Sicily and later to Holland. About the year 1500, windmills were built here by a man named Grignani to move brine through the ponds. His son was named Ettore, which is the name of these saltworks facing the isle of Mozia. 

I love visiting places like this, where the ghosts of centuries - millennia - remind you that people have lived, worked, thrived, built, warred, and recovered on this land. It opens your eyes and soul. Do visit Sicily, definitely. Spend weeks - months - there.

These are digital images from a Panasonic G1 µ4/3 camera with various lenses. I processed the Raw files with PhotoNinja software.

References

Duncan, P. 1994. Sicily: A Traveler's Guide. John Murray, 244 p.

Kurlansky, M., 2002. Salt, A World History. Penguin Books, 484 p. 

Kagbeni: Gateway to the Kingdom of Lo (Part 2)

Kagbeni is an ancient trading city perched on a plateau overlooking the Kali Gandaki River in north central Nepal. For centuries, Kagbeni thrived in the salt trade. Caravans of human porters or goats (really) carried salt south from Tibet en route to India. On the return, the caravans brought back rice and other goods from the lowlands. The introduction of manufactured salt containing iodine largely ended the salt trade, but I am not sure of the date. However, black, rose, and white Tibetian salt are now sold in gourmet stores around the world, so some degree of the salt trade has revived (although some of this new salt trade goes through China, therefore not benefiting Kagbeni at all). In the United States, iodine was first added to salt in 1924. Iodine deficiency is a leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities, or mental retardation (from Wikipedia). Lack of iodine also caused many people to develop goiters (swelling of the thyroid gland).

The geology here is spectacular. The Kali Gandaki winds its way south across a gravel-filled valley, meandering and crossing over and over. The trail crossed some of the streams on temporary wooden bridges, and in other places follows along the shore above the valley bed. In the second photograph, look at the talus slopes (rock debris) tumbling down the valleys and into the Kali Gandaki's flood plain. These talus slopes are an example of erosion caused by gravity flow, with possibly some assistance during the winter by water transport. This is an arid climate, but even minor rainfall may help lubricate rocks and make the slopes less stable.

Many Nepalis come to the river bed to look for ammonites, called Saligram in Nepali. They are Upper Jurassic age, about the age of the opening of the Atlantic Ocean. These demonstrate that sediments in the Himalaya were once seabed and that the uplift of the Himalaya is younger than Jurassic. The uplift was caused by the collision of the Indian and Asian continental plates, which is ongoing. As long as the himalaya are uplifting, there will be an almost endless supply of sediment to be carried down the rivers, and, eventually, into the Ganges. The Ganges eventually joins the Brahmaputra, which jointly form the massive Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, which protrudes into the Bay of Bengal.

We rough and tough trekkers (wimps) were tired after a day walking north along the river from the town of Jomsom. This was the Trekkers Inn near the south entrance to town. It was clean, cheerful, and comfortable.

Late afternoon, the wind blows mercilessly across the river valley, carrying clouds of sand and dust. Best to hang out in the inn and drink a tea. The walls around the older houses were a protection against the wind. The wood neatly piled along the rooftop are a traditional demonstration of wealth. In the past, the wood was vital to heating and cooking in winter. Today, many houses use kerosene stoves, so the wood is symbolic or maybe just a decoration. The air is so dry, the wood does not rot.

This little fellow welcomed travelers and was a symbol of good fortune. He apparently needs repair on a regular basis. It is a hard job being out in the weather.

Narrow alleys take you to courtyards and an occasional stupa. Again, note the wood stacked along the roof parapets.

 

The Kag Chode Thupten Samphel Ling Monastery at the edge of town is a fascinating mixture of ancient and 20th century buildings. Some of the books neatly stored in silk wrappers are hundreds of years old. A huge Tibetan Massif protects the grounds. During the day, he is pretty mellow and sleeps in the sun. But at night, he roams the grounds and eats tourists (and possibly goats and cows).

Late afternoon, the goats come marching through. Poop overload, just be sure you are not in the way. This was late October, and the goats were heading south, I presume to markets in south Nepal or India.

After a night in Kagbeni, we proceeded north into Mustang. We had to show our trekking permits to policemen at a guard station at the north end of town. 

Geology note:  This is a satellite image of the Ganges-Bramaputra Delta, from the NASA Earth Observatory, Nov. 9, 2011. Vast quantities of silt, sand, and mud flow into the northern Bay of Bengal.

NASA file https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=77364

Salton City, CA: The Party Where No One Came

The Salton sea is a endorheic rift lake located in southern California in Imperial and Riverside counties. It is shallow, saline, and fed by agricultural runoff. A few wadis (gullies) lead into the lake, but only flow after a rainstorm. The Sea was trendy and sophisticated in the 1940s, when Hollywood stars flocked to marinas and watched boat races. In recent decades, increasing salinity led to fish kills and severe environmental degradation, and the tourists stopped coming. Dust has led to serious air quality issues.

Salton City was an ambitious dream. When you look at aerial photographs, you see a grid of streets and think this must be a sizable community. But in fact, few of the streets were ever developed, and tumbleweeds blow over dusty pavement. According to Wikipedia, "The town was developed in the 1950s and established in 1958 primarily by M. Penn Phillips and the Holly Sugar Corporation as a resort community on the Salton Sea." But it was isolated and there were few local employment opportunities, leading to minimal development. Could the fact that the summer temperature was over 100 deg F be part of the story? (Of course, Palm Springs is hot, too, but it is higher altitude and close to mountains, and has a more sophisticated aura to it.).

The main excitement seems to happen at the Arco truck stop on California State Highway 86 at the junction with Marina Drive. Optimism: the sign says there are lots for sale. (Click any photograph to enlarge it.)

Cross Highway 86 and head east on Marina Drive, and the Alamo Restaurant welcomes you. Another good sign.

Oh oh, now it look a bit quieter. Where are the people?

The high school looks modern and clean, but it sits by itself in a rather lonely spot.

We found one lot with some habitation.

A sign said "Marina." Where was it? All we saw was sand. Even the palm trees looked lonely.

Another chance to buy some waterfront property.

This road was rip-rapped (protected with stone). Did it once serve as a levee during a time of higher water level? Bombay Beach, on the east side of the lake, also had levees.

Oh oh, some more of these unhappy palm trees.

This basin may have been the unhappy marina. The yachtsmen must have moved their boats away.

This says it all for poor old Salton City. But not all is lost; drive about an hour northwest to Palm Springs, and you can dine in a variety of excellent restaurants. Salton city is only 30 min, south of Interstate 10, so the next time you drive across country, take a short diversion and see the Salton Sea. Click the link for some photographs of Bombay Beach.

The day my daughter and I visited Salton City, storms had recently passed, so the sky had more texture than usual with high clouds. I used a Fuji X-E1 camera with a polarizing filter to darken the sky. I processed the Fuji raw files with PhotoNinja software and converted to monochrome with their red or orange filter emulations. On some frames, I slid the blue wavelengths slider to the left to create an almost black sky. Also, I cropped square as per the days when I used a Rolleiflex camera, with its 6×6 frame. On my next trip there, I will take my 4×5" camera and do real photography with Tri-X film.

Bombay Beach - Crumbling in Monochrome at the Salton Sea

Dear Readers, one of my readers suggested that the cross-processed photographs of Bombay Beach in my previous article looked a bit odd and that the Bombay really should be black and white. So let us try again. I did not have a real (film) camera with me, but I reprocessed many of the RAW files with DxO Filmpack 3 to simulate Kodak's famous Tri-X film.

Bombay Beach is a former resort/trailer court on the eastern shore of the Salton Sea, in Imperial county, California. To reach it, drive on California Highway 111 along the barren desert east of the Sea, and turn west on Avenue A.  

Well, it does not look too bad. There is a store and mailboxes. Human habitation, perhaps?

Oops, the view from Avenue A becomes a bit grim. To the north, beyond the one bush, is a dry and featureless plain.

To the south, well, it was trailer heaven once upon a time.

The gate leads to a sizable deserted parking lot at the plage. They were optimistic.

Continue to the end of Avenue A, and the levee protects the town from flooding. Drive up onto the levee, and the land beyond is a mess of twisted trailer and collapsed sheds. It looks like the debris I saw along the Mississippi coast after Hurricane Katrina, but the Salton Sea does not have hurricanes.  Very odd.

In the water, the pilings are encrusted with salt, and the beach sediment consists of fish bone rubble. 

At least someone had fun with this old chimney.

Back in town, Fifth Street was the waterfront (levee-front?) corniche. Maybe the graffiti is more interesting.

Turn back inland along Avenue G. Someone collected classic Volkswagen Beetles. Rather cool. Someone else collected classic tires. Less cool. 

The well-known western author, Harold Bell Wright, wrote a novel about the formation of the present Salton Sea, The Winning of Barbara Worth. My daughter borrowed it from her local library. Her opinion was that it is one of those novels that does not age well. It lacks the pace or writing style that modern readers find interesting, but it does give an interesting window into the attitudes of the day. The primary assumption of the characters in the book is that by "reclaiming" the desert and making it fertile and lush, they are somehow doing a great work for the world or for God. The desert was something that was "broken" and had to be fixed. It is rather shocking to think that this was the attitude that caused us to make huge alterations to the West, and that a mere 100 years can shift attitudes so drastically.

Also, Barbara inspires all the desert reclamation workers by her "pure essence of womanhood." Well, times have changed...

Harold Bell Wright wrote The Winning of Barbara Worth while living in the tower at the Holt House, on Olive Avenue in Redlands, California. He modeled the protagonist on his host, Mr. Holt. Wright was a pastor, and possibly when the church could no longer afford his services, Mr. Holt provided him a place to stay.

My daughter drove me to Bombay Beach, as she knows my photographic interests. The ground-level photographs were taken with a Fuji X-E1 digital camera, with RAW files processed with Adobe Camera Raw and DxO Filmpack 3.