The Jandal Crew: Salt Mines in Halstatt

You’ve probably always wondered where salt is gathered, it doesn’t grow like wheat and cocoa beans it is found in salt mines that is what we discovered today!

Speeding up the funicular, then jumping off to the entrance of the mine/caves. First we have to get into miners clothes, then off with our tour group to explore the cave!

After you have walked 50m you see the tiny grains of salt in bundles like flowers! The salt mine is 7,000 years old so it’s like walking back through caveman time. We sit down and watch a short movie it said things like…

-the salt rolls up into a circle shape and then gets covered in rocks, clay and mountain overtime which becomes the mining area, which we were walking through!

-now there are still 30 miners working here!

-the movie showed us as well what the miners wear!

Then our tour guide gave us all a surprise by saying we’re going to be riding on a 30m slide. I was very excited about going on i.e. saw people in front off me zooming down like racing cars on motorways! Since I was probably one of the youngest kids to go on by themselves that’s why I was probably the slowest!

After we have calmed down from all of the wild fun we walked a bit more then watch another short video about the world becoming continents! We move onto a stage about how the salt gets “wet mined” and is pumped back to the surface in this big machine. Our tour guide suddenly said “we’re off to a 60m slide its double the size of the other one, when she said that everyone’s spirits perked up! When I was more at the back of the queue I heard people screaming down. I got nervous when I was next, but any way it was lots of fun!

After we have again calmed down from all the whizzing fun we move onto a light play. It showed miners digging than over time one is still standing but gets covered in lots of sand, earlier when we were walking up we saw a skeleton that was found in the salt mines.

Now we are off to our last short movie. It was about the original wooden staircase that was found in 2003 by miners! 3000 years ago it was used. Families would go down the mine and the father used his pick axe and collected the sand, the children hold torches and help gather the salt and put it into the mothers open backpack! When it was over we all knew it would be a good 1km walk back, but then the tour guide gives some exciting news “we are going to catch a small train back! You could hear the happy classrooms and kids going yay and wooh! The train ride was quite fun/scary it was fun when you get faster but scary because it was dark and skinny!