Another magic pink lake

After hearing about Lake Retba (Lac Rose as the locals call it) here in Senegal, I did some research. There are 8 pink lakes (that are known about) in the world. Read about them all HERE

Last Sunday I took off to see the pink water in person.

Lac Rose is quite close to the Atlantic Ocean. A fact that became quite personal as you will hear further on. 

If you looked them up, pink lakes are typically high in salt content. The salt in this lake is collected by hand. See the guy in the boat below, he dug up that salt from the lake bed, by hand. He’s now bringing it back to shore. 

The guy in the hat below was our self appointed tour guide. He explained that it takes about 6 months for the salt to cure. You can see in the background where it looks kind of dirty on top. That’s the red desert dust that seems to be ever present and over everything. If its not dusted every day then the dust builds up, and it’s so fine that it even gets indoors. 

I asked our guide how it was that they don’t run out of salt. He said they only work one half of the lake at a time and it self replenishes. 

They move the salt from the boats by hand as well using these big buckets balanced on their heads, then dump it in piles to cure. 

This girl insisted I take her photo. She sells souvenirs. She calls that basket her shop. Look at my shop, look at my shop. Very persistent.

We drove on through the salt heaps. You can see the bags of salt lined up that are ready to be picked up by trucks. They fill all those bags by hand as well. 

On my mobile phone app I don’t seem to be able to load videos which is a shame cause I took quite a few. I will post a couple on my Instagram though. Click here for Instagram

We drove right around the lake to the side nearest the beach. There were camels you could rent but the guy said it was only 1 kilometer (about 0.6 miles) so we decided to walk. 

Turned out closer to 3 kms and all through the sand dunes, soft sand that is. Was hard going! Thought my old legs were going to give out on me! But the beach was spectacular. 

That’s all for this post.

Bonsoir,

Trish