AT A GLANCE
Why go?
On the southeastern coast of Mayotte, the Éco-musée du sel in Bandréle is a working, open-air museum devoted to one of France's most unusual artisan traditions: making white salt by hand and by fire on the edge of a mangrove. Here the salt is produced the old way by a cooperative of women, the mama shingo, who explain and demonstrate every step of a craft passed down mother to daughter for generations.↗↗↗
What makes it remarkable is that Bandréle is the only place in the French overseas territories where salt is still made by the ignigène method — collecting salt-laden silt and evaporating the brine over a wood fire, rather than in sun-dried salt pans. The site lets you watch that whole process, taste the result, and take home a bag of this strikingly white, delicately flavoured sea salt.↗↗↗