Pink Lake of Senegal (also known as Lake Retba) is not a very famous landmark in Africa, but is still quite extraordinary.
The local population of the Wolof ethnic group prefers to call it Retba Lakes. But we know it as Pink Lake. Again, as in the case of the Blue Grotto, the lake owes its name to its unnatural color for a reservoir.
And here there is something to be surprised at: the color of the water varies from pink to blood red. This phenomenon is associated with the presence in water of a huge number of halophilic archaea of the genus Halobacterium. Translated into understandable language, there are a lot of specific bacteria in the water, which paint the lake in such incredible colors. Particularly bright colors are characteristic of the lake during the dry season.
Pink Lake on the map
- geographic coordinates 14.838150, -17.234862
- distance from the capital of Senegal, Dakar, about 25 km
- the distance to the nearest airport of the same Dakar is approximately 30 km
The history of the Pink Lake is quite earthly and sacrifices with copious amounts of blood were not carried out here. Initially, it was an ordinary lagoon, connected to the ocean by a small channel. But, over time, the ocean surf covered the channel with sand and thereby blocked the communication of the lagoon with the “big water”.
And that is not all. The lake would have remained ordinary and inconspicuous if one day, during a severe drought, they had not become very shallow. Then local residents They began to extract salt from it, and in the simplest way, almost like in the Uyuni salt marsh, collecting it from the bottom of the lake. Over time, bacteria began to develop, turning Lake Retba into abnormal colors. As a result, we have another attraction.
Lake Retba in numbers
- Surface area about 3 km2
- Maximum depth up to 3 meters
It is noteworthy that local residents who extract salt spend 6-7 hours in the water. This is an insanely high amount for such a saturated brine solution. But a special karite product made from shea butter helps workers protect their skin from burns. By rubbing it into the skin, people are able to stay in water for a long time.
The workers live right next to the lake in unpresentable shacks. There is not much entertainment here. Perhaps boat rides, short swimming and jeep rides along the local surroundings. You can buy souvenirs that are sold by local residents, usually carrying them in baskets on their heads.
- The lake has long been the final destination of the famous Paris-Dakar rally
- The salt content in the waters of Pink Lake reaches 40%
- You cannot stay in water for more than 10 minutes, as this can cause chemical burns.
- There are no living creatures (no fish, no algae), except for the above-mentioned bacteria, in the lake (try to survive in a reservoir where there is almost 400 grams of salt per liter of water)
- The salt content in Lake Retba exceeds that of the famous Dead Sea in Israel
- It is almost impossible to drown in the lake, since the density of its water is very high and, accordingly, the buoyant force prevents you from sinking to the bottom
- salt has been mined here since the 70s of the last century
If you try to search the Internet for information or, especially, photographs about Lake Retba in Senegal, and then want to see a photo of Lake Hillier in Australia, you will be surprised to find that half of the material about these lakes simply overlaps. That is, they write about one lake and photographs of another and vice versa. There you are one example. This is not surprising, since both of these lakes are PINK.
Let's try to sort the information and photos by these lakes so as not to confuse them in the future.
Let's start with a lake in Senegal.
Lake Retba
In the language of the Wolof people, Senegal's main ethnic group, the lake is called Retba. Water mirror with an area of three square kilometers located near the Cape Verde Peninsula. And this body of water looks like in a fairy tale about a milk river with jelly banks, only here everything is the opposite: the water is pink, like cranberry jelly, but the banks are white, like milk or, more precisely, like salt. But let's start, as they say, from the very beginning.
Photo 1. 
Many years ago, the lake was a lagoon connected to the Atlantic Ocean by a narrow channel. Gradually ocean waves they washed sand, which blocked the channel, and the lagoon turned into salt Lake, quite deep at first. However, in the 1970s, droughts began in Senegal, and the lake became very shallow. Now its greatest depth does not exceed three meters.
The water in Retba is really bright pink, and the reason for the unique color is that cyanobacteria live in the lake - the oldest microorganisms that appeared in the Earth’s biosphere 3.5 billion years ago. But it’s not just their advanced age that inspires admiration. These bacteria are one of the few that can survive in the thick brine that is the water of Pink Lake. The salt concentration here is 380 grams per liter, that is, almost one and a half times higher than in the Dead Sea. Salt lies in a thick layer at the bottom of the lake, and thanks to this, the local population can live almost comfortably - according to African standards, of course.
Photo 2. 
There are flat-bottomed boats along the entire coastline. This picture is reminiscent of the streets of our cities with cars parked on the sidewalk, but each owner of a boat here has a historically assigned place for him, which no one dares to occupy. Boats here are not a luxury and, in general, not even a means of transportation. They are necessary to extract salt. Every year, through joint efforts, people lift about twenty-five thousand tons of salt from the bottom, thereby deepening the lake. If earlier it was possible to ford it, now such walks, “like dry land,” are practically impossible.
Every morning here begins with local men leaving their houses and, stretching, heading towards the lake.
However, calling these buildings houses is only a stretch. And it’s hardly worth calling them shacks either. These are peculiar huts built from improvised materials - reed stalks, car tires, plastic bags... And visitors from neighboring countries(in our opinion, guest workers). These people leave their native lands and flock to Senegal, because here, on salt mining, you can earn about ten dollars a day - the money, according to local standards, is quite big, in their homeland - in Guinea, Mali, Gambia - they are talking about such a salary couldn't have dreamed of it. However, such happiness does not smile on them for too long, because no one can stand it here for more than three years - the salt water gradually corrodes the skin, and the person becomes covered with painful ulcers.
Photo 3. 
So, early in the morning, migrant workers head to their punts, untie them and go out onto the lake expanses. Moving further from the shore, they drop anchor and lubricate their skin with so-called Chinese vegetable oil, which is extracted from the fruits of the tallow tree. If you neglect this simple procedure, then the concentrated saline solution splashing over the side of the boat will corrode the skin almost to the bone in just half an hour.
Jumping over the side of the boat, the miners first use a special device, like a crowbar, to loosen the salt, which covers the bottom of the lake in a dense layer, and then fill the basket with it under water. The next step is to lift the basket and transfer its contents to the boat, after allowing the water to drain. The boat can hold up to 500 kilograms of salt. From the outside it seems surprising that a small boat with such a cargo does not sink. However, in order to sink a boat in the waters of the lake or drown yourself, you have to try very hard - the concentrated solution keeps both the loaded punt and the person afloat.
To earn the coveted ten dollars, a worker must deliver a boat filled with salt to the shore three times during the day. By the way, in order to load 500 kilograms of salt into a boat, it takes an experienced worker at least three hours. Total: nine hours up to your shoulders in brine...
Photo 4. 
But then the miners bring the heavy punts to the shore, and then their wives and daughters get down to business. The women's task is to transfer the salt from the boat into basins, carry it a little further from the water and pour it there to dry. And a basin filled with salt, by the way, weighs at least 25 kilograms...
After the salt dries, pebbles and debris are picked out of it and then poured into piles that make the coast of Retba look like an alien landscape. Salt can lie in such piles for several years until a wholesale buyer is found for it. During this time, which initially had a gray color, it becomes dazzling white under the rays of the sun.
Photo 5. 
No Senegalese citizen will stoop to become a salt miner. It's hard and thankless work. Therefore, local residents buy it in bulk and resell it to other African or European countries. They also happily play the role of guides, bringing tourists to an amazing lake with pink, jelly-like water and white milky, that is, salty, shores.
Photo 6. 
Lake Retba is located less than an hour's drive from the capital of Senegal (40 km), on the northwestern coast of the country, Grand Côte, in close proximity to the shores of the Atlantic. It is most convenient to arrive here within organized excursion is a popular attraction and joining a tour is easy.
If you want to arrive at the lake on your own, it makes sense to rent a car with a driver. The most unpretentious tourists can use the minibus service. And if you want to stay here for a few days, there are a considerable number of hotels at your service resort area Grand Cote.
Photo 7. 
Retba is separated from Atlantic Ocean just a strip of low dunes, and the underground salty waters of the Atlantic generously feed this body of water, from which there is no outflow of water. So, over the course of thousands of years, the concentration of salt here increased - and today Lake Retba, in terms of salinity during the dry period from November to June, easily “matches” the popular Dead Sea: the salt content in the water reaches 40%. By the way, the length of the lake is about 2 km, and the depth is no more than 3 meters.
The fantastic pink hue of the water is the result of the vital activity of a special kind of cyanobacteria that feed on salt. These bacteria produce a pink pigment to “attract” a certain spectrum of solar radiation necessary for their life. Well, then the pink pigment saturates the water in the Retba and colors its surface with amazing shades.
Photo 8. 
The concentration of salt in Retba is so high that you cannot lie here with a book in your hands on the motionless surface of the lake - the mineral very soon begins to corrode the skin. As for the salt miners, they rub their bodies with shea butter, which prevents the insidious mineral from coming into contact with the surface of the skin.
Photo 9. 
And on the other side of the Retba, facing the Atlantic, stretches a ridge of low, graceful dunes. In a word, the landscapes here are truly mesmerizing: snow-white salt mountains, bright pink water surface and golden sand of the Green Peninsula of Senegal.
Photo 10. 
This lake is also often called Lac Rose .
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Rubbing their bodies with a special oil that protects them from the harmful effects of incredibly salty water that corrodes the skin, salt miners spend the whole day on the lake. They dive to the bottom, blindly fill baskets with salt, then unload it into a boat and take it to the shore. There, the catch is dumped into heaps, allowed to dry, then washed and sorted, removing silt and sand. Burning out in the sun, the salt from the Pink Lake becomes snow-white, and this is what is brought for sale.
Photo 14. 
But few tourists come to admire amazing lake with “bloody” water, they decide to plunge into the colored depths of Lac Rose. They prefer to observe from the side and take a lot of photographs.
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Now let's look at a more effective appearance lake Lake Hillier in Australia.
Photo 1. 
On the edge of Middle Island there is a mysterious pink lake surrounded by legends. From above, the shiny surface of pink Lake Hillier resembles the icing on an oblong cake. This lake gives unexpected shades to the wooded corner of the Middle Island. Middle Island is one of the 100 small islands that make up the Exploration Archipelago, which stretches along south coast Western Australia. The most mysterious natural attraction of Australia is Lake Hillier and its pink water color.
Photo 2. 
A shallow salt lake, approximately only 600 m wide. The white ribbon around it gives the lake an even greater impression of an unearthly landscape. The lake is surrounded on all sides by bright green eucalyptus trees, separated from the ocean only by a narrow strip of white sand dunes.
Until the middle of the 20th century, people were content to explain this phenomenon with the assumption that special bacteria lived in the lake water. In 1950, the pink color of the lake was studied by a group of scientists who hoped to find seaweed - Red algae (Dunaliella salina) - in the salt water of the lake. In very salty water, these algae produce a red pigment that turns other Australian lakes pink, such as the one on the mainland near Esperance. A water sample taken from Lake Hiller did not find any traces of algae, so the color of the lake is still a mystery.
Photo 3. 
The first mention of the “pink” lake on Sredny Island dates back to 1802, when the British navigator and hydrographer Matthew Flinders stopped here on his way to Sydney, who became the discoverer of the pink lake.
Over the next few decades, the island was a kind of transit point for whalers, but at the beginning of the 20th century, the attention of visitors finally turned to the miracle of nature, albeit from a very materialistic point of view - they began to mine salt here. However, the business did not flourish for long. Even taking into account the use of special equipment instead of traditional manual labor, the profit was not enough to develop the business, and the strange color of the water did not particularly attract the consumer. Six years later, the entrepreneurs abandoned the project, and since then Hiller has attracted only curious tourists and, occasionally, scientists.
Photo 4. 
In general, Lake Hiller is not the only pink lake even in Australia, not to mention bodies of similar colors in other parts of the world. Almost all continents have their own pink lakes - here is Retba in Senegal, Torrevieja in Spain, Canadian Dusty Lake, Masazir in Azerbaijan, Koyash Lake in Crimea, and many others. But of all of them, the Australian Lake Hillier is the only one whose mystery has not yet been solved. After all, the pink color of water is usually given either by special algae, or cyanobacteria, or specific chemical substances in the composition of the forming rocks. And what “paints” Lake Hiller such a bright color? Scientists cannot yet answer this question. The results of studies conducted in 1950 showed the complete absence of any colorful microorganisms, both at the bottom of the reservoir and in the water.
Swimming in this wonderful lake is, of course, possible - but it is at your own risk. After all, there is no trace of any spa baths, which are so common, for example, at the Dead Sea.
Photo 5. 
There was a local legend about a sailor who found himself on the island after a shipwreck. Exhausted and wounded, he offered to sell his soul to the devil so that he could save him from this nightmare. At that same moment a man appeared on the shore of the lake and poured a jug of blood and a jug of milk into him. After which he said: “Take a bath, and you will not feel hunger or pain.” He did so, but acquired such strange abilities that the pirates who saved him eventually got scared and threw him back into the sea.
Let me remind you that scientists' studies of the lake water did not produce any results. They did not find any bacteria or minerals that could turn the water pink.
Salt dissolved in lake water can be used for food. Therefore, there were salt developments there for some time. In addition to nutritional benefits, this salt also has medicinal properties, so there is still some truth in the legend about the sailor.
Photo 6. 
Lake Hiller is only 600 meters wide. The reservoir is surrounded on all sides by tall, bright green eucalyptus trees, which contrast sharply with the pink water of the lake. The lake is located at the very edge of the island, and only a narrow strip of land, consisting mainly of sand dunes, separates it from the ocean. From a bird's eye view the lake looks most impressive. The fact is that the shores of the lake are bordered by a thin layer of white salt, so from above it seems that the “pink spot” seems to be framed!
Thousands of tourists come to the island every year. They all want to see with their own eyes unusual lake, which looks so great against the backdrop of evergreen eucalyptus trees!
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sources
http://tainy.info/world-around/rozovoe-ozero-retba/
http://tonkosti.ru/%D0%9E%D0%B7%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%BE_%D0%A0%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B1%D0%B0
http://animalworld.com.ua/news/Neobychnoje-ozero-Retba-v-Senegale
Pink Lake is a lake that has a reddish or pink due to the presence of algae that produce carotenoids (organic pigments). These include algae such as Dunaliella salina, which is a type of halophile green microalgae that lives in particularly salty seawater. Thanks to their pink color, these lakes are becoming increasingly popular among tourists and photographers from all over the world.
This body of water is located on the edge of Middle Island, which is part of the Exploration Archipelago, which stretches for tens of kilometers along the southern coast of Western Australia. The peculiarity of the lake is its bright pink color. The color of the water is constant and does not change if water is poured into a container. The length of the lake is about 600 meters. It is separated from the ocean by a narrow strip of land consisting of sand dunes covered with vegetation.
People first discovered the unusual lake in 1802. Then the British navigator Matthew Flinders decided to stop on the island on his way to Sydney. What a surprise the traveler was when, among the dense forests of the island, he came across a pink pond. The lake is surrounded by white salt deposits and dense forests of tea and eucalyptus trees. To the north, sand dunes separate the lake from the Southern Ocean.
The lake is very popular and tourists strive to get there, even passengers on planes flying over the lake take photographs of this miracle of nature.
2. Retba, Senegal
Lake Retba or Pink Lake is located east of the peninsula Cape Verde(Cap Vert) in Senegal, northeast of Dakar, the capital of Senegal. It got its name because of the color of the water in which the algae species Dunaliella salina grows.
The color is especially noticeable during the dry season. The lake is also known for its high salt content, which, like the Dead Sea, allows people to float easily.
There is a small salt mining business on the lake. Many salt workers work 6-7 hours a day in the lake, which contains about 40% salt. To protect their skin, they rub “Beurre de Karité” (Shea Butter, obtained from shea nuts collected from the shea tree) into it, which softens the skin and prevents tissue damage. What is called Lake Retba these days, when- that was a lagoon. But the Atlantic surf gradually washed in the sand, and eventually the channel connecting the lagoon with the ocean was filled up. For a long time, Retba remained an unremarkable salt lake.
But in the 70s of the last century, a series of droughts hit Senegal, the Retba became very shallow and the extraction of salt, which lay in a thick layer at the bottom, became quite profitable. At the same time, the water in the lake acquired a pink tint thanks to microorganisms that can exist in a saturated saline solution.
Amazingly colored water and charming boats completely cover the two-kilometer coastline Pink Lake, or Lake Retba, is what it is called in the language of the Wolof people, Senegal's largest ethnic group.
Apart from them, there is no other organic life in the Retba - for algae, not to mention fish, such a concentration of salt is destructive. It is almost one and a half times higher here than in the Dead Sea - three hundred and eighty grams per liter!
3. Torrevieja Salt Lake (Alina de Torrevieja), Spain
Salt lake Torrevieja and La Mata Salt Lake are salt lakes surrounding Torrevieja, a seaside town in southeastern Spain. The microclimate created by the largest salt lakes in Europe - Torrevieja and La Mata - is declared one of the healthiest in Europe, according to the World Health Organization.
Alina de Torrevieja and La Salina de La Mata are the largest salt lakes in Europe.
A special type of algae grows in the water, which gives the water a pink tint. The pink color of Lake Torrevieja, caused by the presence of algae and salt, gives it a "science fiction" appearance. Just like in the Dead Sea in Israel, here you can also just lie on the surface of the water. In addition, this will be of great benefit for the prevention and treatment of skin and lung diseases.
At the other end of the lake, salt is mined and exported to different countries. You can see a huge number of bird species near the lake.
4. Hutt Lagoon, Australia
Hutt Lagoon is shown on the left side, and Indian Ocean- on the right.
Hutt Lagoon is an elongated salt lake located off the coast north of the Hutt River estuary in the mid-west of Western Australia. It is located in the dunes adjacent to the coast.
Hutt Lagoon was once the mouth of the 60km (37 mi) Hutt River, but at some point in the prehistoric past, the river changed course and the estuary remained isolated from both the river and the sea.
The city of Gregory is located between the ocean and the southern shores of the lake. The road between Northampton and Kalbarri, called George Gray Drive, runs along the western edge of the lake.
The lake acquired this color thanks to the abundance of the same algae that produce beta-carotene.
This lagoon is home to the world's largest microalgae farm. The total area of small artificial ponds in which Dunaliella salina is bred is 250 hectares.
The lake is 14 kilometers long and 2 kilometers wide.
Hutt Lagoon is a salty pink lake, having a red or pink hue due to the presence of Dunaliella saline in the water. This type of algae produces carotenoids, which are a source of beta carotene, a food coloring and a source of vitamin A.
5. Lake Masazirgol, Azerbaijan
Lake Masazir is a salt lake in the Karadag region, near Baku, Azerbaijan. The total area of the lake is 10 square kilometers. The ionic composition of water contains large volumes of chloride and sulfate.
Workers load salt into horse-drawn carts
In 2010, a plant was opened here to produce two MFAs of Azeri salt. The estimated reserve of salt that can be extracted is 1,735 million tons. It can be extracted both in a liquid state (from water) and in a solid state.
Due to the increased sulfate content, the water in the lake is pink
This pink lake located in British Columbia, Canada is quite unusual, little known and possibly unique. The water in this lake is not at all salty and does not contain algae, but it is still pink in color. The photo shows pink water flowing into the lake. The color of the water is due to the unique combination of rocks in this area (rock dust from the glacier).
Pink Lake Quirading is located 11 kilometers east of Quirading (Western Australia). The Bruce Rock Highway passes through it.
The local population considers Pink Lake a natural wonder. At certain times, one side of the lake turns dark pink while the other remains pale pink.
Pink Lake is a salt lake in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. It is located approximately 3 kilometers west of Esperance and is connected to the east by motorway south coast(South Coast Highway).
The lake is not always pink, but the distinctive color of the water, when the lake takes on a pink tint, is the result of the activity of the green algae Dunaliella salina, as well as a high concentration of saltwater shrimp. The lake has been designated as Important Bird Habitat by the international organization for the protection of birds and their habitat conservation.
And another miracle of nature: Field of Pink Lakes, Australia
This unusual landscape was captured from an airplane in western Australia. This field of pink lakes is located somewhere between Esperance and Caiguna.
There are hundreds of small pink lakes throughout the course, each with its own unique shade of pink. This is due to the fact that the concentration of algae and salt in each lake is different from all the others.
15.04.2013There is a lake in Senegal that is bright pink. It was as if potassium permanganate had been poured into it. The water here is so salty that only one type of microorganism can survive in it - they give this color. For days on end, standing up to their necks in water, local residents scoop salt from the bottom of the lake and pour it into boats. The work is hard labor, but by African standards it is paid tolerably.
(Total 14 photos)
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1. Amazingly colored water and boats, boats... They completely cover the two-kilometer coastline of the Pink Lake, or Lake Retba, as it is called in the language of the Wolof people, the largest ethnic group in Senegal.
3. What is now called Lake Retba was once a lagoon. But the Atlantic surf gradually washed in the sand, and eventually the channel connecting the lagoon with the ocean was filled up. For a long time, Retba remained an unremarkable salt lake. But in the 70s of the last century, a series of droughts hit Senegal, the Retba became very shallow and the extraction of salt, which lay in a thick layer at the bottom, became quite profitable.
4. Nowadays people work, standing shoulder-deep in water; twenty years ago they didn’t swim on the Pink Lake, but walked - the water in it was waist-deep. But by extracting about twenty-five thousand tons of salt a year, people are rapidly deepening the lake. In some places its bottom dropped quite significantly - by three meters or more.
5. The water in the lake acquired a pink tint thanks to microorganisms that can exist in a saturated salt solution. Apart from them, there is no other organic life in the Retba - for algae, not to mention fish, such a concentration of salt is destructive. It is almost one and a half times higher here than in the Dead Sea - three hundred and eighty grams per liter...
6. Microbiologist Bernard Oliver decided to scientifically explain the reason for this unusual color of water. The lake is inhabited by the microorganism Dunaliella salina, which, absorbing sunlight, releases pigment
7. Due to the deepening of the bottom, it will soon be impossible to extract salt in the old old-fashioned way, and the Senegalese authorities will be faced with the problem of employing the army of miners and traders feeding around the lake. But for now, every morning, dozens of half-naked men, taking simple equipment, swim out to the middle of the lake, lay up the boat and climb into the incredible salt water…
8. A saline solution of such a concentration can, in just half an hour, corrode the skin to such an extent that poorly healing ulcers form on it. Therefore, before getting into the boat, miners rub themselves with oil. It is obtained from the fruits of the tallow tree, scientifically it is called butyrosperma Parka... It is this oil that makes their bodies shine in the sun...
9. The salt at the bottom is first loosened, then, blindly, placed into the basket under water. From the basket, after allowing excess water to drain, it is reloaded into a boat... It seems that under such a weight the vessel should sink - but the dense salt solution reliably keeps it afloat. The main thing is not to forget to scoop the salt water out of the boat from time to time. To fill such a boat with salt - here it is called a pirogue - it takes a good worker three hours. During a working day, he must deliver three pirogues to the shore.
10. Men extract salt from the bottom of the lake... This is where their participation in the process ends - all further operations are performed by women, often very young, almost girls... They drag the salt in plastic basins to the shore and dump it there to dry. This work is, perhaps, no easier than men’s - a full basin weighs twenty to twenty-five kilograms... But in Africa, few people are concerned with the issues of protecting women’s and children’s labor...
11. Freshly mined salt is grayish in color. Therefore, after letting it dry, the women wash and sort it out to remove silt and sand... From small hills, each of which has a sign with the name of the owner stuck in it, the purified salt is poured into common heaps, a three-kilometer ridge stretching along the shore of the Pink Lake... It is in them for a year or two waits for wholesale buyers - during this time the salt, under the rays of the tropical sun, has time to fade and become completely white. The salt that is mined here using such primitive methods is exported to African countries and, as an exotic product, even to Europe. The Senegalese themselves are content with salt obtained industrially from sea water.
12. Wholesalers pay about thirty cents for a fifty-kilogram bag. The pie holds approximately five hundred kilograms. It turns out that for a day of hard labor the worker receives only nine dollars. But by African standards this is good money. Otherwise, guest workers from neighboring countries - Mali, Guinea, Gambia, Upper Volta - would not come to Lake Retba... They usually do not stay here longer than two or three years. Otherwise you can become disabled. The Senegalese themselves look down on visiting workers. They make a living with more “skilled” work - buying and reselling salt, and as guides and bodyguards they accompany Europeans who come to see the miracle of nature - a lake whose water seems to be stained with blood...
13. Curious tourists also try to look into the village where salt miners live. It is located right next to the shore. When asked what this place is called, the residents answer: “No way, just a village”... At least three thousand people live here. There are even cars on the street that are old, like almost all cars in this country.
14. Workers build their dwellings from available materials - reeds growing nearby, plastic film, old tires... To call such a building a “shack” means to flatter it greatly. However, in the local climate, nothing more capital is required - the houses are designed to protect their inhabitants not from the cold, but from the sun and, at the end of summer - beginning of autumn, heavy rains...
The same car tires are used instead of well logs - there are four such wells in the village. In Europe, this muddy, salty-tasting water would probably not be used even for technical needs, but here they drink and cook food with it - there is no other way. You can hardly see any grazing goats around the village, although Senegalese peasants breed a lot of them. Beans and corn are the main food of salt miners...
The conditions in which African guest workers live can only be described as terrible. But the inhabitants of these shacks themselves treat the squalor that surrounds them as something completely normal. They didn’t come here to live, but to work - from morning to night to extract salt from the Pink Lake, which these strange Europeans admire so much.
Our planet is teeming with many mystical, unknown, scary and unusual beautiful places. Red and pink lakes are named after the color of their waters. Most often they have shades of red: pink, crimson, scarlet and closer to orange. Many of them are dangerous and inspire feelings of fear and horror.
Scientists say that the lakes owe their color to the microorganisms that live in their waters.
The creepy Red Lake Natron in Tanzania turns all living things into stone
In Africa, on the border with Kenya, in Tanzania there is an ominous Lake Narton. Everyone who touches him turns to stone. So far these are only careless birds.
Why do they become fossilized? It's simple: ideal alkalinity pH is from 9 to 10.5 and salt keeps the corpses in the condition that you see in the photo.
But the lake cannot be called dead - it is a haven for millions of pink flamingos. Birds come here to breed. This is an ideal habitat for them: predators avoid this lake, and blue-green algae with red pigments are good for food.
How to get to Lake Natron? From Kilimanjaro Airport to Arusha 50 km. And from Arusha it is another 240 km. There are no special tours to this lake, but on the list of tours to the Oldoinyo-Lengai volcano there is an item: visiting Lake Natron. On your own, of course, it will be much more expensive. You can also see the red lake during a safari in National Park Serengeti National Park or Great Rift Valley(Great Rift Valley).
Bloody Red Lagoon of Colorado in Bolivia
Another reddish lake, Laguna Colorado, is located in Bolivia, in the town of Eduardo Avaroa on the Altiplano. This is a state park with a salt lake. The color of the water is given by borax deposits and some algae.
The lake is inhabited by the same pink flamingos. Crowds of tourists from all over the world come to see these beautiful birds and the equally beautiful shallow lake.
How to get to Red Lagoon? You can get there from the towns of Tupiza or Uyuni by jeep (300 km). The place can be visited as part of the Andes tour.
Koyash mineral lake in Crimea
Koyashskoye Lake is located near the Borisovka resort, in the Opuk Bay, in the Cimmerian steppes.
To contemplate the beauty of the lake. Its rich pink color and fancy stone structures in salt crystals are worth coming to see in July-August. The water recedes and the salt comes out, settling on everything it meets on its way.
How to get there (get there)? From Feodosia, get to Borisovka and use your own transport along the dirt road. By public route from Kerch to Maryevka and then on foot 7 km.
Red salt lake Sasyk-Sivash in Crimea
And this is another lake on the Crimean peninsula, not far from the resort of Evpatoria. Lake Sasyk-Sivash is pink due to the evaporation of mineral salt. During evaporation, many carotenoid microalgae appear.
The healing properties of salt have attracted tourists for a long time. It has a high content of magnesium and potassium, bromine and calcium.
Another bizarre moment with Lake Sasyk-Sivash is the “boiling of the lake”. This miracle is understandable - it’s all due to underwater fountains (griffins).
How to get to Lake Sasyk-Sivash? You can take an electric train from Evpatoria to Saki. Then take a bus to Pribrezhnoye and walk 2 km. or by car.
The salty Chokraskoye Lake is located not far from the village of Kurortnoye on the Kerch Peninsula. It, like all the above, has the property of water turning pinkish-red. The reason for this is unicellular algae.
Tourists come here not only to look at the lake, but also to get healing mud and get treatment.
How to get there? By bus from Kerch to the village of Kurortnoye and 2 km. on foot.
Pink lakes tend to predominate in Australia. There is a large concentration of these unusual water areas. Lake Hillier is located at the very large island Middle Island in Western Australia.
How to get here? The problem is that the island is not inhabited, and you can see it from the window of an airplane. Although Australian travel companies offer trips on sea ships.
Lake Retba in Senegal
The pink lake Retba is located near the capital of Dakar in Senegal.
Pink lake in Altai
Or rather, not one pink lake, but two. The first lake Bursol or Buturlinskoye is located in the Slavogorodsky district Altai Territory(Bursol village), 500 km. from Barnaul to the steppe. And the second is called Raspberry Lake, located 400 km away. from the capital of Altai, near the village of the same name Raspberry Lake.
These salty pink lakes are a great place to relax and prevent the treatment of many diseases. It is clear that the only industry here is salt mining. The pink color of the lakes comes from the crustaceans Artemia and nauplii.
It is better to get there by your own transport or from Branaul by bus: to Raspberry Lake - to the village of Mikhailovskoye, to Buturlinsky - to Slavgorod.
