Grand Salines, St. Barthelemy, French West Indies - Beaches on Waymarking.com

Grand Salines is an undeveloped beach on the south side of St. Barts, tucked between two mountains that rise up to greater than 1000 meters on either side. Slightly rosy white sand, no facilities whatsoever, excellent for swimming and sunbathing, good for bird watching. The road in is a little rough, but doable in a rental car. Parking is a little less than a quarter of a kilometer walk from the beach. The walk in is along a sand/volcanic rock trail; some sort of footwear is advised, flip-flops are adequate for this purpose. The view from Google Earth (show in the posted screen capture photo of this Waymark) should give you a clear idea of what it is like to get there.

Just north of the beach is the grate salt pond, or Grand Saline. Historically it was used to harvest salt; as far as we were able to find out, the facility is not longer used for that. Essentially the process was to flood the interior lowland area to create the pond, then allow the pond to evaporate, and harvest the residual salt. We mention this for two reasons: first, the channel/spillway used to flood the pond is still there, and can be viewed at the west end of the beach. Second, because we were told (this is not verified) that they still flood the pond routinely, and have a festival to celebrate it.

As with any beach, the wind and the weather can make a difference. When we were there in early December, it had one to one and a half meter waves, the water was quite warm, and it was beautiful. there was a slight current to the west as we had had westerly winds for a few days. as you can see from the Google Earth shot, it is not as protected as, say, Half-Moon bay in Antigua.

For us, it was ideal.

Type of beach: Natural Location of beach: Seashore Beach surface type: Fine sand Web Address: [Web Link] Ratings (1-5):

Recent Visits/Logs:

There are no logs for this waymark yet.