After the hike of two days ago brought us to the edge of a pair of fairly large bodies of … something liquid-y … we have an explanation on what we were looking at.

It comes from a 30-year resident of the town where we are staying, and one of the community’s most prominent members?

So, what are we looking at there?

According to the long-time resident, the two bodies of liquid are not drinking water.

The one that looks like water (again, go back and look at the screen grab at the top of the April 16 item) … actually is a form of sewage treatment, according to the local resident.

The water evaporates into the atmosphere, he said, and the solid, waste materials settle to the bottom of the plastic-lined rectangle and are eventually used as fertilizer.

Meanwhile, we were barking up the right tree when we speculated on what is going on with the curious purple body of liquid, in the basin just to the north of the watery looking pool.

The long-time resident said the purple comes from disposed liquid from a nearby town’s “wine cooperative” — where smaller growers take their grapes to be made into wine.

What is left over from the wine-making process is pumped (trucked?) up to the plateau and released into the second “reservoir” — presumably with the same result. Something resembling water evaporates into the atmosphere, and the sediment settles to the bottom, and can be scraped up and used on another project.

We might have considered, right off, the idea that the two large, shallow pools were about the treatment of sewage, but their location is quite some distance, over secondary roads, from the town.

So, no, we will not be climbing the fence and plunging into either pond, now that we know what is going on beneath the surface.