Salt pans
Burgas salt ponds are an interesting tourist attraction on the northern outskirts of the town.
On the vast area of Lake Atanasovsko, salt is mined in many salt pans, which stand out with water with a typical pink colour.
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Enjoy the mud and salt bath
The salt pans are still an active industrial area, but you can still visit the area as a tourist at the main entrance.
You can walk along the wooden walkways and even take a dip in the two salt ponds.
In addition to the salt bath, you can also enjoy a mud bath.
There are no freshwater showers at the ponds so you can wash the salt and mud off. The showers can be used for 2 bgn at the adjacent restaurant (cash only is accepted).
Entrance fees and opening hours
The ponds are open to the public every day from 8:00-17:00.
Admission costs 8 bgn and can be paid at the turnstile with a card or cash.
How to get there
Transport to the salt ponds is quite complicated. If you don't dare to travel individually from the resorts, some local tour companies offer trips from 45 bgn.
If you'll be driving around Bulgaria in a rental car, there is a free parking lot built right at the entrance. The turn off the main road between Burgas and the airport is clearly signposted.
There is no public transport to the salt pans and no bus stops within a convenient distance. The nearest outskirts of town with a bus is over 3 km away.
However, there is a tourist road train from the centre of Burgas to the salt pans.
A great transport option is a bicycle. There is a new cycle path along the coast to the salt pans and you can get there by bike from the centre in 30 minutes.
Burgas has an e-bike sharing system via the Burgas Bikes mobile app (Google Play / App Store). You can pay for one hour at 2 bgn.
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Any questions left?
If you have any questions or comments about the article...
This will need to be set straight. 🙂
Entry is definitely not free (for quite a few years now). The entrance fee is 8 BGN and can be paid in a machine with a turnstile with both cash and card.
You can pay for a massage in the area. 20 minutes will cost you 30 BGN, longer massages are more affordable.
What you will NOT find in the complex is water for washing. One of the nearby restaurants runs toilets and showers, you pay 2 BGN for the toilet (free for restaurant customers) and for 2 minutes of running water you have to throw another 2 BGN into the coin box.
Opposite this restaurant there is another one + a shop and in between there is an ice cream stand.
Transport to the salt baths is not complicated. It's a 4km walk from Sarafovo and less than 3km from the Burgas seaside park, but it's also possible to take a road train or similar modes of tourist transport. There used to be a train from Sarafovo as well, but sometimes a piece of the road was torn off by the sea during the covid, which is still going on and the local government is successfully ignoring the problem for a change. For now, the rest of the road can be walked and cycled.
Individual travel is not the only way to visit this place. With a bit of effort, you can google travel agencies that organize trips there, e.g. from Sunny Beach for 45 BGN.
The salt lake is certainly not a little known tourist attraction. The proof is that you will commonly hear Czech, Slovak, Polish and other languages spoken there.
Thanks, I'll edit!