I have been called a snob because of my obsession of sea salt and black pepper. Yeah I know it makes no sense at all and it's kind of a shallow. When we first got to Bali we found a Japanese and a Balinese guy in Ubud selling salt and soap in a make shift store. I starting asking them questions about their salt, though we barely spoke a common language. I found out Balinese salt comes from Kusamba. I got my itch and started collecting sea salt everywhere we went. Zarah joined in by requesting her salt at the dinner table and not mine. Last month we launched a line of body care products that are taking off for us, and I can’t stop thinking about how to add to the line. Oh yeah, Kusamba bath salt.
One of our agents here married a girl from Kusamba. He text me the Jalan (street) where we could find someone in her family and off we went. Kusamba is truly a beautiful beach, sparkling clean without a tourist in sight. Women sift through sand for rocks to sell in Denpasar for villa construction. Everything they use to mine the salt comes from either a palm tree or a piece of plastic.
Tables of palm trees lined in black hold salt water for dying.
Farmer pours sea water on sand repeatedly to make it super salty.
Sorting rocks to sell.
Farmer loads salty sand into palm trunk lined with woven plastic fabric. Then he pours sea water over it to filter out the sand.
Salt crystals forming.
Pocari Sweat is salty water that tastes nasty like a bad Gatorade.
