It's not dawn yet. It will be the hottest day of August, and in the south of Croatia you can barely breathe, because the dawn promises to be sultry. Under the walls, carved into the hill above Ston, behind which the sun creeps dangerously, challenging with its first rays that menacingly extends from the greenery, there are about thirty silhouettes of people who, this early, when the heat has not yet woken up, are already working.
In the whiteness of salt, in white t-shirts, and above them a clear sky without clouds, they appear like angels on voluntary work actions in paradise.
Or at least that's what some of their peers might think who, instead of picking up a shovel at six in the morning, return home at dawn from some hilarious party. For the hallucination to be complete, the partygoer could see from the clusters of white crystals that the angelic workers scoop up with shovels, the raw material for something that would make the next evening's party even crazier.
Salt is harvested here.
Shovels slide noiselessly through the air, and white workers do their work in silence. The engine of a passing car is only occasionally heard, and later, when Ston wakes up and stretches under the scorching sun that has already settled at the top of the sky and dominated the peninsula, tourists will rush like locusts to the iron fence that separates the salt flat from reality to see better, to take pictures of this tradition happening before their eyes. In a world where everything happens with one click of the mouse, where computers decide and implement decisions, the shovel has become a pure exotic, a tourist attraction.
Along the rails in the saltworks, a wooden wagon loaded with salt is chugging towards the warehouse. Slowly, as if he had his whole life ahead of him, the ancient thing gurgles, rustles and carries the salt towards the shade where it will wait for packaging and sale.
The divine, pure, important salt, without which there is no life, is eternal and accompanies the human race throughout the millennia. The Ston salt pan was here even when the years were counting down to zero, and the earth was walked by ancient people who did not know where the civilization they were creating roots was going.
But, even then, and centuries later, the importance of salt and its vital energy were known.
The salt pan in Ston is protected as a hidden treasure. Neum was sold to the Turks so that they would not give up the Ston salt mine. It is protected by the walls and the hard work of the peasants. And so, the centuries passed, in harmony between man and salt, sea and sun, hard work and expected reward. Because the food became better because of the salt, the organism was stronger, more resistant, and the economy of the peninsula became more and more prosperous. Ston salt was widely heard, it became famous and in demand. Solariums in Ston were as famous as those in France and Italy. In an extraordinary climate, in an area where the sea is kind to people, on Pelješac, which gave its inhabitants both oysters and salt, trade flourished.