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Ciao, HIVE friends!
Today, I want to tell you about a very ancient and fascinating place I recently had the chance to visit. It’s the salt pans of Sant’Antioco, whose history dates back more than three thousand years. In addition to being the oldest continuously inhabited town in Italy, this small city was one of the major metropolises of the western Mediterranean during the Phoenician era and owed part of its wealth to salt.
In ancient times, salt was essential because it allowed people to preserve meat and fish and to treat wounds and infections. This made it an incredibly valuable commodity, often used as a form of currency. And maybe you don't know this, but... this is exactly where the word salary comes from! In ancient Rome, the salaries of legionaries and magistrates were supplemented by a certain amount of salt for the hours of work completed in a day: a form of payment named salarium. The very way we refer to salt in many European languages originates from the ancient Latin word sal: salt, sale, sal, sel, Salz, sol'...
The history of the modern saltworks in this place began in the 1960s. Of those early buildings, only ruins remain today, offering evocative glimpses along the long path that leads to the heart of the salt flats, as I showed you in the previous images.
Sardinia is a peculiar place, where nonsense rules seem to be invented expressly to be ignored. Here, for instance, there’s a “No Entry” sign; yet all it takes is to climb over the gate, as everyone does, and as I did, taking also my bike inside. Ironically, this gate shouldn’t even be closed, since this path is part of a pilgrimage route—the Santa Barbara Mining Trail.Bold
Right from the start, the salt flats began to offer me some striking views, with the old ruins of the saltworks standing in the background like ghosts from another world—stern, unmoved by the caress of the salty breeze.
There wasn’t a human soul anywhere. I didn’t come across a single person. On the other hand, there were plenty of flamingos, which have one of their most important colonies in Sardinia right here, near the Santa Caterina pond [I talked about it here].
Finally, riding my bike, I reached the heart of the salt flats — the area where the operational buildings, machinery and a massive mountain of salt, as large as a snow-covered peak, are concentrated.
So I couldn't resist: since there was no one around me for miles and miles, I decided to act like a child. I left my bike behind, jumping and shouting as I ran toward the top of the salt mountain.
If you've followed me this far, well... we have a big problem. We're lost in a massive, deserted salt flat, and you can see with your own eyes just how huge it is... and night is falling! The shadows grow longer and longer, making the place spectral, unsettling in its solitude, with all those abandoned and somewhat decaying buildings, the sounds of animals, the howling of the wind. In a place like this, it's easy to believe in ghosts.
Yet, Mother Nature was reserving her most wonderful gift for me.
Feeling calmer in the desolate silence of the evening, perhaps protected by the descending shadows or maybe perceiving me as harmless, the flamingos allowed me to come closer and closer. I tried to disturb them as little as possible, but when I did, they took off in flight to move away.
Strange animals, flamingos. Elegant and clumsy at the same time, as beautiful as they are bizarre, as peaceful in appearance as they are deadly when they stop to hunt in the shallow water.
Catching the flight of a flamingo.
I was so happy and fulfilled by that marvelous spectacle, a show that nature seemed to have staged just for me, that I didn’t realize the sun was about to set. I couldn’t bring myself to leave; every few minutes I encountered a new group of flamingos and felt the need to stop and photograph them, because each of those moments was unique and irreplaceable. I must have seen two or three hundred flamingos, maybe even more.
When the sun had finally set, I still hadn't managed to leave the salt flats. I had to ride my bike back home in the dark for almost 15 kilometers, but it was worth it!
Have you ever been to a place like this? Feel free to share your experience, or any similar one, or an emotion that my article has stirred in your heart.
For now, as always, thank you for your time, your attention and your support!
See you soon on the road,
Alessandro