Le Lac Rose

This past weekend, Marwa, Debbie, and I joined up with a bigger group and went on a full day excursion to Le Lac Rose, the Bandia Wildlife Reserve, and the village of Joal-Fadiouth.  I took over 300 pictures and the trip was over 14 hours long, so I'm going to break it up into a few segments.

We met up with the group at 7:30am, which was really early, so early that my host mom had to walk me out to the street to help me find a taxi... and I'm really glad that she did because there were some kind of sketchy people lurking around, nothing was open yet, and there were very few taxis driving around.  

Our comfy van and the group for the day

We drove North-Eastish for maybe 30 minutes or so... really specific and helpful, I know haha... and we arrived at Le Lac Rose in time to still be able to see some glimmers of pink.  The lake is a pale pink color, to varying degrees, based on the temperature, the wind speed, the time of day, and the time of year.  The day we went you could definitely tell there was a pink tint to it... although it wasn't as pink as I was expecting... oh well *shrug*.  

The lake gets it's pink color from a particular type of algae that lives in it, and I've also heard that the very high salt content -- close to 4%! -- of the lake has something to do with it also.  

Men work 6 or 7 hours a day in the water scraping salt from the bottom of the lake and then hauling it back to shore in their boats called pirogues.  Then the women further refine the salt and treat it with chemicals (iodine I believe) to make it edible.  To be able to stand in the salty water all day without chemically burning their skin, the men first coat themselves with African shea butter for protection. 

And so yeah... we took a couple pirogues out and watched a man work... and here are the beautiful pictures!