Pedra de Lume
| Pedra de Lume | |||
|---|---|---|---|
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| Coordinates | 16 ° 46 ′ N , 22 ° 54 ′ W | ||
| Basic data | |||
| Country | Cape Verde | ||
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Archipelago |
Ilhas de Barlavento | ||
| District | Sal | ||
| ISO 3166-2 | CV-SL | ||
| height | 0 m | ||
| Residents | 500 | ||
Pedra de Lume ( Portuguese : Pedra "stone" and lume "fire") is a small town on the east coast of the island of Sal in the Republic of Cape Verde . It has about 500 inhabitants.
geography
The small village is located in the east of the island directly on the Atlantic coast at about the same latitude as the island's capital Espargos . From there, the only paved road leads to the village, about five kilometers away.
To the south of the village is the elongated Baía da Parda , at the northern end of which is a protected small bay . There is the small port around which the place has developed. The coast is mostly rocky. On the southern edge of the village there is a small piece of sandy beach, which, however, lags behind the fine, wide beaches of the south coast.
The place is surrounded by rolling hills of volcanic origin formed by erosion . The cinder cones are the remaining signs of the hotspot activity, which is ultimately assumed to be the reason for the formation of the entire archipelago . The name of the village is ultimately derived from the volcanic landscape.
The largest of the surrounding volcanic craters with a diameter of approx. 900 meters was created by a phreatomagmatic explosion and thus a tuff ring or maar .
On its bottom there is a saltworks of natural origin. Since the bottom of the crater is below sea level, salt water can steadily seep through the rugged rock into the caldera, which evaporates there in the desert-like climate of the island and leads to the formation of evaporite rock .
history
Pedra Lume is the one with the richest history of all the places on the island of Sal. For many years, interest in the desert island was extremely low. Apart from occasional excursions booty-seeking turtle hunters , there was little reason to call at Sal. Only towards the end of the 18th century was the island opened up by the entrepreneur Manuel António Martins Velho , who was based on the neighboring island of Boa Vista . He founded the salt works and made them usable for harvest.
In the natural saltworks of Pedra Lume, artificial lakes were gradually dammed up, which are connected to each other with a system of pipes in order to be able to use the system more effectively. In 1804 the crater wall was broken through to gain better access to the interior. During the 19th century, the first people settled near the saltworks and the small white chapel was built in the center of the village.
The salt was at that time mostly to Brazil sold until the market due to higher expectant protective tariffs eventually collapsed. However, Pedra Lume experienced a new boom during the 20th century through the French company Les Salines du Cap-Vert . In 1919 the company had a cable car built that reached from the inside of the crater to the port and was designed for the transport of (theoretically) up to 25 t of salt. The masts of this cable car system have survived to this day, as has the old loading station directly at the port, which is now in a highly dilapidated state. Pedra Lume salt was exported until the 1930s, after which production continued to decline. Today not even enough salt is produced in the salt works for the needs of the island itself.
economy
The few villagers of Pedra Lume live mainly from fishing, which comes from the small sheltered harbor. There are no shops in the small town, goods have to be brought from Espargos.
Salt production is practically of no importance today, the salt works are now privately owned. In the salt lakes you can take a bath or swim. A small café halfway down from the crater entrance to the caldera floor offers the opportunity to shower or sunbathe. Thus, tourism is slowly gaining importance as an economic factor here , but at a significantly lower level than, for example, in Santa Maria in the south of the island.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Data on Pedra de Lume from Falling Rain Genomics, accessed on July 15, 2010.
- ↑ SILVA, LC, SERRALHEIRO, A., TORRES, PC & MENDES, MH - Phreatic / phreatomagmatic structures in the Cape Verde Islands: the Salina de Pedra Lume (Sal Island) example. Journal African Earth Sciences 30 (4A), 81, 2000.
- ↑ a b c Cape Verde Islands , Dumont travel paperback, 3rd edition, 2007, ISBN 3-7701-5968-3