Yesterday’s excursion – 80 stories into the earth

Have you ever thought about where they get salt? Probably you have a little bit. Here in southern Portugal you can pretty easily see salt beds where they are drying it out. Turns out, there is also such a thing as a salt mine. I guess I’m just ignorant as there are 16 salt mines in the US. One such is close by to us in Loulé, Portugal.

Yesterday morning, Scott went off to the International Motorcycle Rally for the day (more about that later) so I went with Celina, Lance and John (Celina’s brother) to tour the Loulé Salt Mine with art exhibits. Yes, art exhibits!  Wowee! A Twofer!

Celina had already purchased the tickets, so we just checked in at a little building that had some books and a small shop. Eight other people were going on this tour. At the top of the mine, they gave us sort of like a hair net, a hard hat with light and a reflective vest. The website says wear close-toed shoes, but 2 of the women had their cute little sandals on. They were suffering by the end (snicker). (Bad Robbi, bad!)

There are two ways in/out of the mine.

1. A series of 56 ladders that takes a serious miner almost 2 hours to climb. That’s a definite hell-to-the-no thank you very much.

2. A shaft elevator. The elevator could take 4 of us at a time plus mine employee. There was one elevator to go down and another to come up. They were counterbalances, which I had never seen or heard of before. It moved pretty fast! 3 minutes to get to the bottom, which we were told was the equivalent of an 80-story building. OK, we were also told how many meters and other facts that didn’t really mean anything to me. 80-story building I can understand, and, apparently, remember.

This really was so interesting, I can’t decide where to start. The pictures on the website are better than most of what I took, but they don’t show the art. I’ll add some at the bottom.

Let’s see. The salt mined here is not sold for table salt. These are the primary uses.

Uses for mined salt

One of the things listed under “Other Applications” is cooking meat on a salt slab. They conveniently have some slab in the little gift shop. I should have asked if they recommend cooking salmon that way. Hmmm.

Other things learned:

·  All the equipment was/is brought down in pieces and the miners have to reassemble everything. When something dies beyond repair, they just leave it down there as a “gallery piece”.

·  The miners put in the electrical system, air exchange system, everything.

·  The mine employs 8 miners and 6 additional people for tour guides, etc. Though there are not currently any women miners, there have been in the past.

·  Salt is unusually flexible and resilient and also quite strong. There has never been a cave-in in this mine.

·  Although the amount of space that has been “opened up” by the miners is enormous, the air exchange system could only support 150 people in the event the mine needed to be used as a bomb shelter. Now that I think about it, that assumes electricity. So maybe not the best idea. I didn’t think to ask about backup generators…

You know I’m a big fan of Star Trek and Star Wars as well as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. There is a piece of equipment down there that reminded me very much of Anakin Skywalker’s racer. Also, I kept thinking we’d round a corner and come upon a Horta or a dragon.

The last Horta, except for her eggs

· There are people who have asthma or other lung issues who go down in the mine and hang out when the miners are working and breathe in the salt dust. They say it helps.

· Very little of the salt in the mine is the white color we think of. Some of it is really pretty though. Some of it even looks like amber. They let us pick some of it up and take it with us. Here’s what I got.

Salt Rocks from the Loulé salt mine. Pen for scale.

·  They told us to put the salt rocks in jars when we got home. Otherwise the humidity in the air will “melt them”. I think I have to do some experimenting with this.

·  The Patron Saint of this mine in particular, but miners in general is Saint Barbara. According to Wikipedia

Sadly, Barbara was arrested for turning down a marriage proposal. She was sentenced to be beheaded, and her OWN father did the deed. As proof of karma, he was struck by lightning and burned up in flames on his way home. HAHAHAHAAA!

There was a whole "gallery" devoted to Saint Barbara art and artifacts. I didn't photograph any of it. I don't know why, except I really don't go in for saints.

If you come visit, we’ll take you to the mine if you have interest and aren’t claustrophobic.