We got a wonderful look at a community with a fascinating history. The woman with the bottle on her head also turned out to be our guide to the community.
They have created a small museum to explain the centuries of salt production that gave Salinas its name. The salt was mined from the ground around here and then leached out of the soil with water. This is a picture of the place where the leaching process took place. The salt water was then boiled down in wood fired pans to produce the salt crystals. After most of the iodine was removed, the salt was hand molded into cones and shipped to market.
Unfortunately this labor intensive process is apparently no longer competitive, and salt production ended in Salinas just in the last decade.
In the salt museum they had a little salt to sample. Daniel and I tried it and it was delicious! This Ecuadorian salt could compete, we think, with the gourmet salt from France and elsewhere based on its great taste.
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