April 27, 2015 - Isla San Jose, Punta Salinas

We spent a lovely day here with no other boats.   The winds were calm in the morning with only a slight increase in the afternoon.  We hiked around the old abandoned buildings and salt mine and then went back to the boat for home school.  This salt mine is huge and some appear to be in operation but we saw no people the entire day.  Some of the ponds appeared really red while some dryer ones were really blue.  We’ll have to do some research on why that was.  We are keeping up with home school and should be done with school by early June the latest.  After dinner of BUTZ chicken (i.e. Butter chicken made with BUTter and ritZ) we went ashore for a walk on the beach out to the point.  We were in fairly calm conditions but out at the point the winds were quite strong from the north.  We obviously were being protected by the island and then enjoyed a nice calm night again and some good solid sleep. 

Kevin and Steve went into the beach the next morning to throw some rocks at the old crumbling lighthouse.  Boys will be boys!  Last night on our walk they all threw rocks into a window/opening of the lighthouse just to see if they could get a good shot.  That target practice quickly turned into trying to chip off chunks of it the crumbling cement around the window opening.  The window glass was long gone.   This is an old abandoned lighthouse, a new metal one stands next to the old crumbing cement one.

The anchorage, we were the only ones out there!

Walking around the salt ponds

We took a hike up a hill

testing the waters......

team building/trust experiences are always presenting themselves.

The kids walked from one end to another

This pond was extremely red

The winds were non-existent at the salt ponds

interesting how they do this.  Apparently they flood the area with sea water and
then let evaporation do the the rest.

red water on the left, white salty water on the right.

Dried ponds

Equipment left from when the salt pond operation was in business

Kevin was bummed when he found out the ignition key was not present.

walking around the old salt mine 

scrambling up over the small rocks

salt ponds hard at work

close-up of the evaporation at work

Kids switched shoes because Kevin's got all wet

Kids with abandoned buildings behind

Someone placed items washed up onshore in this one building.  Lots of shoes!

Extremely clear water here

New lighthouse on the left, old one on the left

The window opening before target practice

After.  SUCCESS!

Kevin figuring out where his next rock should go.