Salt of the earth

Salt from Middle Earth

    Another place worth exploring was Lake Grassmere; a 1,750-hectare-lake where a solar saltwork is located. Lake Grassmere's hot drying, north-westerly winds make it ideal for natural salt production. From this lake, some 60,000 to 70,000 tons of of salt is harvested each year. Passing by the Blenheim-Christchurch highway, the 20-meter-high piles of snowy stacks of salt are something of a landmark, readily visible by day and night. 

    Down the coast from Blenheim, a large shallow lake has ponds that develop a deepening pink colour during the summer months. At the same time, huge white mounds appear on the shore. What on earth is going on here?This fascinating and rather alien landscape is the result of natural salt production. Seawater, fresh from the Pacific Ocean, is pumped into Lake Grassmere. Warm north-west winds blow across the exposed lake, evaporating water and increasing the concentration of salt. The very salty water is pumped into deep holding pens, then into shallow crystallisation ponds. As the water continues to evaporate, salt forms as a crust on the bottom of the ponds. The remaining water is pumped out and the dried salt is harvested, crushed, washed and moved by giant conveyor belts to form huge mounds of sparkling white crystals.The pink to purple colour of the crystallisation ponds is caused by natural microscopic green algae that change to pink in the high salt concentration. The same phenomena gives the Red Sea its name. There are also small pink shrimps in the water that thrive in this salty environment.Other salt works in the world are generally much closer to the equator, but Marlborough's abundance of warm north-westerly winds, long hours of sunshine and low summer rainfall provide the evaporation needed to extract salt from the sea at this latitude.

        
 Looking at the pink salt beds glaring from the noonday sun at Lake Grassmere, I could clearly see nature at work, yet could hardly reconcile the thought that water from the sea, harvesting using a natural process of evaporation by the sun and wind, ends as salt on our dining tables. 

         I remember my primary school teacher who would always stop us from throwing excess salt  on our hands after eating green mangoes and santol. I didn't understand what she meant then, but I remember her telling us to respect salt. "Only God can make that salt, no man can," she would always tell us. I have always kept that in mind and to this day, I still treat salt like something really precious. 

         She was right. Salt may be considered as one of the humblest commodities, yet, it's amazing how the sodium it contains is essential in the nutrition of both man and animals. Consider this: Salt  is one of the essential elements. In order of importance, oxygen, water, salt (sodium) and potassium rank as the primary elements for survival of the human body. Salt is present in all body fluids. Our blood, sweat and tears even our cells are bathed in a sodium-based extra-cellular fluid. What's more, we are even grown in a salty solution--our mother's amniotic fluid. 
What do you think amniotic fluid is? I did a research and found these facts about it. 
Amniotic acid protects and nourishes the baby in the womb. While the baby is in the womb, it is situated within the amniotic sac--a bag formed of two membranes, the amnion, and the chorion. The fetus grows and develops inside this sac. Initially, the fluid is comprised of water produced by the mother. 

         The human body contains approximately 450 grams of salt, which must be kept replenished in order to maintain our normal health and vigor. 

         Recently, I stumbled upon some interesting trivia about salt, which I would like to share. Some of you may have learned about these earlier, but I am sharing it just the same. Did you know that in ancient times, because of its power to preserve and purify, salt was spilled upon legal documents to symbolize enduring agreement and freedom from deceit? Also, that Roman legionnaire, who guarded the Via Solaria, one of the most famous military roads in history, received part of their pay in salt and called it their 'salarium" from which the modern world "salary" came from. To this day, we refer to a good man as "worth his salt" and we take others' dramatic pronouncements "with a grain of salt".   

         From Lake Grassmere, our next stop would be another town called Kaikoura, where we were booked for the night.  Kaikoura, which is a Maori term, translate to "meal of crayfish" (lobsters to us). Famous for its majestic mountains, which are snow-capped for many months of the year, Kaikoura also boasts of the dusky dolphins and the sperm whales that attract thousands of tourists each year. 

         More next, friends.  Kia Ora!