Friday 14 December 2012

I persuaded Paul to join the Internations group to go to the salt lakes, which are really just salt pans which have been scooped out in the sand. Water is pumped into the pans and the ground salt precipitates upwards and is then dug up with a front end loader and conveyed to another pan. Here the process is repeated until a pretty pure product is bagged for sale.

        

        

 

        

After wandering around there for a while we headed away towards the red dunes to climb up the dunes and watch the sunset and then have dinner.

        

The wind was blasting and a fire was lit. I took a hike over a dune to water some plants and on my way back I spotted a ghostly herd of white camels. I beckoned Paul over to take a look and then we warmed ourselves  by the fire. We huddled in the lee of the car eating what I had prepared and trying to avoid sand blowing into our food. I had become dark when we decided to head back to town. I for one was very relieved to get out of the wind and blasting sand.