Staying in Trapni last night and tonight. This is a seaside town and our hotel is right on the water, we fell asleep to the sounds of waves on the beach. This town was destroyed in the war and was rebuilt so in and of itself is lovely in the setting but no groovy architectural masterpieces per se. The view makes up for it.
This is right outside our hotel:
Today we went to the island of Mozie, which has Carthaginian settlement ruins. This was occupied by the descendants of the Phorenecians from the 8-4th C BC, and has no other superimpositions of Roman or Greek settlements. This was a big trading post until the Greeks sacked it in 397BC. You take a pontoon boat to get there, through salt flats.
This area has a lot of sun and wind. And the water is fairly shallow and soil is clay which makes it dense. This means that the setting is right for salt harvesting and this has been done by the Carthaginians since they got here. There were windmills added to power the Archimedes screw that moved salt water into he flats from the sea. The wind power also drove the grindstone that ground the huge salt crystals. They still harvest salt here today, from June to September. It is hard physical labor. Once the salt is mounded into what looks like10-12ft high hills it is covered with terra cotta tiles to keep the rain off so it can continue to dry. Much of the salt harvest is mechanized but the harvesting of the flor de sel is still done by hand.
If all goes well, we are having couscous tonight, which is a regional dish. This area is a mere 90 miles from Tunisia.
Amazing! These first pics are from the island which is separated from the salt flats by a short stretch of sea, with ruins and some of the recovered items.
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