The Secovlje (pronounced Seh-CHOVE-lee-eh) Salina Nature Park is a great place for birders, bikers (not motor), walkers, etc. There is also small museum on the site which outlines the history and techniques of salt-making.
Piran from the air
U. Trnkoczy/Archives of TZ Portoroz
Slovenian Tourist Board/A Fevzer
Slovenian Tourist Board/J. Skok
Slovenian Tourist Board/J. Skok
Erla Zwingle was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and has been working for magazines, either as a staff writer, editor, or freelance journalist, since 1975. After graduating from the State University of New York at Albany with a B.A. in art history, she moved to New York City, working as Managing Editor of American Photographer magazine (now American Photo), then Senior Editor of Vis-à-Vis (then the United Airlines inflight magazine). She was Assistant Editor at National Geographic magazine for four years, after which she took up freelancing full-time.
Her stories on a wide range of subjects have appeared in numerous publications, primarily National Geographic, to which she has contributed more than 20 articles on topics from global urbanization to the Ogallala Aquifer, from Catherine the Great to the Alps, Boston’s North End to London’s Docklands.
Her books include a biography of photographer William Albert Allard (New York Graphic Society, 1987) and the National Geographic Guidebook to Venice (2001).
She currently lives in Venice where she rows in the Venetian way (like the gondoliers), fishes in the Venetian Lagoon, studies Venetian history, and, of course, writes. But she drops everything when tourists come who want her special services as personal assistant, expediter, guide, and whatever else they need to make their stay memorable. Go to: www.yourownvenice.com.
SEA AND SKY: THE SALTPANS OF PIRAN
By Erla Zwingle
There is a point where sea and sky embrace, and if the sun is shining and the wind is blowing (and the pool of water not too deep) they will give birth to dazzling white salt. In Slovenia, that point is at Secovlje, on a snippet of coast just before Croatia.
Here, for 700 recorded years, and undoubtedly much before, families have toiled and prospered laboring in saltpans that produced a substance that was at least as valuable as gold. Tourists adore the nearby town of Piran, with its Venetian flourishes and narrow streets, but may not realize, as the local saying goes, that “Piran was built on salt.“ In fact, when it was part of the Venetian Republic, Piran produced one-third of the salt of the Serenissima. Today, these pans are the only ones in the world still being worked in the traditional way, and the salt from Piran is gaining admirers everywhere.
U. Trnkoczy/Archives of TZ Portoroz
But that isn’t the whole story. This 650-hectare area on the spreading alluvial deposits of the river Dragonja, is also a crucial nature reserve, an intensely saline environment perfect for scores of rare or endangered plants, fish, and birds that, no less than humans, love and need salt. As the pincers of development in Portoroz and Piran squeeze ever more tightly, the value of the salt is surpassed by the value of the habitat, and the value of the salt-working culture that thrived here. The effort now is to find and maintain a balance between commercial salt production, environmental protection, and promotion of the area as a state-designated park which can welcome visitors, offer the tranquility of this tiny seaside universe, and preserve the remnants of the salt-working culture of the past.
Slovenian Tourist Board/J. Skok
Salt has been “grown” in pans along the Adriatic coast for centuries, but the first mention of salt production was first documented in 1272. In that period some Croatians came from Pag and demonstrated their revolutionary new method of making salt crystallize by paving the pans with sea mud which, by reacting to the seawater, slowly hardened and covered itself with a sort of network of one-celled algae. This smooth layer of biosediment, called “petola,” was the ideal base for producing brilliant, clean salt, in pans so shallow that, unlike most other places, salt could be harvested twice a day. Secovlje is the only place in the world where the art and science of the petola has been maintained.
“Four years ago, there was only one salt pan still in use,” Dario Sau told me as he supervised the springtime spreading of the thin layer of black mud that would become petola. “By now we’ve rescued 25.” The saltworks which had employed nearly 100 workers stopped full production in 1967, and the elements took their toll of the houses and embankments and pans which had been so intricately constructed. But there are still many people who recall how it was, when the season ran for five months from the feast of St. George that of St. Bortolo, and workers were paid by the kilo.
“I remember that in April” -- the 24th, to be precise, or St. George’s Day -- “the people of Piran came here in their boats,” said teacher Milli Romanelli of the local folklore group Il Taperin. “Those from the town of Secovlje came with donkeys or bicycles. I went with my grandmother to see them.”
“We got up early to work in the fields,” recalled Anamarija Margetic. “Then we went in the afternoon to help in the salt-pans. It was hard. We had to load the salt into bags, and it was so heavy. Your neck and shoulders hurt so much.”
In 1958 the pans at Secovlje produced a record 32,000 tons of salt. But production declined, overwhelmed by cheap industrially-produced salt from North Africa. In 2003, the year the pans reopened, 3,500 tons were harvested, analyzed and graded. Each year has seen some increases, although predictions are difficult because production depends entirely on the weather: rain can interrupt the crystallization process.
In addition to being sold in Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy and Japan, Piran salt is savored in the best restaurants in New York City. “It has a ‘round’ taste,” said Ranger Kristina Gorisek. “They used to say that Piran salt was sweet. Of course it wasn’t sweet, but it wasn’t bitter. It has magnesium, potassium and other elements. It’s not just pure sodium chloride.”
As for the park, it is under pressure. The nearby airstrip which was built decades ago to bring high rollers to the casino and hotels in Portoroz, is already an intrusion; now developers gaze longingly at what looks to them like useless abandoned ground. Their eyes shine with visions of more apartments, hotels, a soccer field and a longer airstrip.
Many endangered species -- wild orchids and Kentish plovers and common terns -- couldn’t take any of this for long. And they have few alternatives. “Not only the brine shrimp, but the black-winged stilts,” Ranger Andrej Sovinc said -- “they can‘t survive in other areas.” Nesting, breeding, pausing to feed on their immemorial migrations, the birds depend on the saltpans in every way.
Paradoxically, “The highest concentration of birds,” says Chief Ranger Andrej Sovinc, “is where there was the greatest intervention of man. In the spring we fill these basins with seawater for the migrating birds and fish, and the brine shrimp. Then we decrease the water levels to ensure breeding conditions for the birds. In winter we put in more to attract migrating birds -- they need more water and this is a necessary thing for invertebrates.” He looked through his binoculars. “There are some spotted sandpipers,” he pointed out. “Maybe they will leave tonight and go as far as Poland.” We see a pair of common terns hunting fish; an endangered species, they nest here. “We ringed some terns here,t hat they found in Senegal" Andrej said.
Slovenian Tourist Board/J. Skok
The future will unquestionably hold some changes. Although the Secovlje saltpans are a state-designated nature park, the government pays one company not only to produce salt but to manage the park. In this case, that company is Mobitel, which is investing 1 million euros a year for maintenance, cultural heritage and biodiversity. It is also making money by selling salt, brine, sea mud and bird-watching rights. “But eventually they will say to us ‘OK, fly away so we need to prepare for that”, Andrej said,
How? For one thing, glossy little shops labeled “Piranske Soline” in Ljubljana and elsewhere offer an assortment of products packaged in a way that is almost irresistible, perfect for curious tourists who want something different. Bags of salt, bottles of salt brine and nifty little portable wooden cases allow you to carry your salt wherever you go -- the latest foodie affectation. There are even bars of dark chocolate with tiny crunchy crystals of salt embedded in them, an idea that seems totally wrong only until you taste it. Wide straw hats, roomy linen shirts, all very upscale rustic, these are flights of merchandising fancy. As one woman told me, “There aren’t any salters’ songs. And there aren’t any typical costumes, either. What did they wear? Rags. With the sun and the salt, what do you want?”
There is also a plan currently in need of funding to build an outdoor thalassotherapy spa in the park. “We want to construct an outdoor spa that could take 50 people, who will come by boat,” Andrej Sovinc explained. “What they do in hotels in a little claustrophobic room we will do outdoors. We’re looking forward to developing this. It will cost 1 million euros.” There is also a museum of salt-making set up in one of the original stone dwellings. Not least of all, the park and saltpans are preparing their application to UNESCO for designation as a World Heritage Site.
However it is shaped, the future will almost certainly contain the past. Fifteen salt “fields” are rented to outside workers, who come in the late afternoon with their families and work until midnight, or longer. A family could have worked the same field for generations. “It’s not only earning money,” Sovinc stresses. “These people have a real feeling for the salt. It’s really nice to see.”
Toward sunset, Marija and Giuseppina, friends for more than 50 years, come down to the saltpans for a walk in the cool of the evening. Despite years of labor, they still feel drawn here. “Yes, I can still enjoy it,” Marija said, speaking in the Piran dialect that flaunts its Venetian roots. “Even then I enjoyed it. I love these saltpans. Really love them.”
“Who didn’t love the saltpans?” Pina interjected. “They’re open, so there’s always air. I walked so much here, I know all the paths. It’s seven kilometers from one part to another. I went all across them.”
“This is a great patrimony our grandparents left us,” said Milli Romanelli with feeling. “I love the pans -- it‘s the earth, the heat, even the smells. You feel it with all of you.”
Anyone who comes here is struck in some way, perhaps unconsciously, by the simplicity of the silent magic, where water and sun mysteriously meet, mingled by the wind, to bring forth their gleaming white essence.
The Secovlje (pronounced Seh-CHOVE-lee-eh) Salina Nature Park's website with English-language option is: www.kpss.si.
