Travel with Manfred

Travelogues from around the world

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document without a fee, provided that the person conspicuously and appropriately publishes on each copy the appropriate copyright notice and these terms and conditions for copying, distribution, and modifications. Changing this document or charging a fee for distribution or using this document for a financial profit is not allowed. Including this document in a publication that is for sale is not permitted.

This document solely expresses the author's current opinions. It in no way expresses the opinion of any other legal entity. This document does not claim to be correct, complete, or factual. Reading it is at your own risk.

Copyright © 2003 by Manfred P.. All rights reserved.

Apr 13-26, 2003

Tales from One Thousand and One Beaches

In Search of the Perfect Beach in the South of Spain

by

Manfred P.

Keywords: Spain, Almería, Almeria, Murcia, Alicante, Sorbas, Carboneras, Playa de los Muertos, Playa del Castillo de Macenas, Mojácar, Mojacar, Pozo del Esparto, Pulpí, Pulpi, Playa de La Carolina, Águilas, Calabardina, Calanegre, Bolnuevo, Puerto de Mazarrón, Mazarron, Percheles, Sierra Moreras, Isla Plana, Cartagena, Playa del Lastre, Portmán, Portman, Calblanque, Monte de las Cenizas, Cabo de Palos, La Manga, Mar Menor, Los Alcázares, Los Alcazares, Santiago de La Ribera, San Pedro del Pinatar, Guardamar del Segura, tourist, travel trip report, travel log, travelogue.

Visit the Video Page.

Getting to the south of Spain from the northern coast where I live requires many hours of driving and patience. Passing Madrid and Granada I reached the Sierra Nevada. The southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada finally make way to the hills leading to the ocean.

The Almería Badlands

The heydays of the movie making have passed, but one can visit some of the old movie sets and a new western theme park has been built. Watch out for the wooden full-sized fort and ghost town along the 340A freeway. Long live Hollywood; long live the western stunt shows.

Passing the desert the next better-known village is Sorbas. There isn't much to do, but Sorbas is called - somewhat exaggeratedly - the "Village of the Hanging Houses". The river encircling the village has created cliffs encompassing the village and the houses are built right up to the cliffs.

The Almería Coastline

Just a few kilometers from the Beach of the Dead is the town of Carboneras. To reach it you pass an industrial port, a water desalination plant and a power plant. You realize that you have left the national park of Cabo de Gata behind. Carboneras is a beach town with local tourism, a castle and a series of beaches and beach walks.

The coastline in Almería is hilly. Cliffs are interrupted by small bays and occasionally by mid-sized sand beaches. Along the entire coast in regular intervals are defensive towers from the 16th to the 18th century. These towers were built as part of country-wide coastal defensive system against pirates of the Mediterranean. A road winds up and down the hills following the coast. This gives you good views and leads you from one beach to the next. The main road never runs right to the beaches but small dirt roads branch off to lead the last one or two kilometers down to the bays and beaches. Playa del Castillo de Macenas is a good example. Here you can drive your car on a dirt road right to the beach. In the center of the beach is a tower from the 18th century. Around here the beaches are mostly rock or pebble beaches rather than sand beaches. I stopped to have a late breakfast in my van at the beach. A couple of women later joined me on the beach. They brought their canvases, sat down and started painting the beach with the tower and the rolling hills in the backdrop.

I must have lost my way somewhere, suddenly ending up in England because abruptly and unexpectedly street signs were in English, the radio station was in English and even the hour of the news was local London time. I had reached Mojácar, a coast town overrun by English tourists. Here you find above all real estate agencies and a nice golf course.

Passing Mojácar things quiet down again. Pozo del Esparto is a tiny village. It has several small beaches. None of the beaches is suitable for swimming as they are all rock beaches. While there is nothing special about the village there is a tiny stretch of beach walk that is different from the typical open, cemented or tiled beach walks. This one is very short but charming, made of pebbles, lined densely with palm trees on both sides and colorful flowers in between. Outside the village are open spaces with views of the coastline. A nice place to listen to the waves and have a picnic.

Moving further to the east it gets even quieter and here it is easy to find many beaches where you can be all by yourself. This is the area around Pulpí and San Juan de los Terreros. Here there are isolated sand beaches with flowers in yellow and purple blossoming on the beach and the air is filled with the smell of wild sage. My favorite beach is Playa de La Carolina. Besides being more or less empty, the flowers and the pleasant scent in the air it also offers cliffs with interestingly shaped caves right next to the sand beach. Just watch out for the ants. They are aggressive and attacked me viciously as I stepped close to one of their nests.

The Murcia Coastline - From Águilas to Portmán

At Calanegre it gets interesting again. The paved road makes way to a dirt road. From Calanegre all the way to Bolnuevo and Puerto de Mazarrón runs a 13km long dirt road right along the wild coast. This is most like one of the most untouched stretches of coastline in Murcia. The hills following the coast in this region are called Sierra Moreras. A dozen beaches are nestled into this area, collectively called the beaches of the Sierra Moreras. The coast is a random mix of cliffs, surprising rock formations, flat rock or pebble beaches and occasionally a sand beach. My favorite beach is near Percheles. It might be called Percheles Beach, but the Germans I found there called it the Bay of Snakes. Since there are no street sign anywhere near I can't be sure about how the beach really is called. It is a double bay, with a long sand beach and palm trees. The only people that make it here seem to be local fishermen and a few German tourists with their RVs. Like in the old Wild West, they usually form a circle of wagons in the sand close to the beach. At the end of the 13km dirt road the rock formations get more and more fantastic. One of them I remember was called Cueva del Lobo ("Wolf Cave"). At the very end of the dirt road is the village of "Enchanted City of Bolnuevo," the official name of the group of houses where the paved roads starts again.

The beaches continue without break, but now with more tourists again: Bolnuevo, Puerto de Mazarrón, and Isla Plana. Next comes Cartagena. Cartagena was founded before the Romans, somewhere around 227 BC. As I strolled around the city I reached the conclusion that Cartagena has not received much investment in the last century because a significant number of houses in downtown are collapsing or in ruins. At the same time I reached the conclusion that the millenniums of history make Cartagena a unique place. Roman columns are remains of houses are spread throughout the city. The Roman amphitheater competed with the Catholic Church for space. Ancient city walls encircle the old town dominated by a hill with a castle and an old lighthouse. For 2000 years the port was the crucial lifeblood of the city. To defend it four fortresses were built on the hills surrounding the harbor of Cartagena. The importance of the port has not changed in our times. Cartagena is a military port today as well. Large gray military vessels crowd in various areas of the harbor. Gigantic tunnels have been blasted into the cliffs at sea level. Complete submarines can enter directly from the ocean into the tunnels and the tunnels can be closed with equally gigantic steel doors. Above the submarines are then some 100 meters of granite, safe from bombs and missiles.

Minutes south of Cartagena is one of the largest industrial complexes I have ever seen. I found an oil port, a container port, a power plant, an oil storage area, a refinery and more. A village is called "Repsol Petroleo"; the equivalent in the US would be "Exxon Oil". Nice village name, no? Here is also the waste dump of Cartagena. Tons of garbage are dumped here on a continuous basis and hundreds or thousands of seagulls flock to the site to feed on the kitchen waste. So, be warned, don't take the road to Escombreras if you have a weak stomach or a sensitive nose.

As I drove on the landscape took on strange forms. It looked like the countryside was turned upside down by a giant. It appeared like a giant's sand box. The landscape was scarred and the hills decapitated. And between the hills were massive holes, big enough to swallow entire villages. These are the leftovers from the mining in the early 20th century. Given the color or red and red brown I assume they dug and extracted iron here. In some places the rocks took on a blue or purple color. Old brick chimneys or their ruins pointed like ancient fingers into the sky. Remnants of abandoned blast furnaces from the past littered the landscape. Portmán is the only village that survived the economic downturn and the closures of the mining operations. Portman is an aged village, partially abandoned, with a nearby beach: Playa del Lastre. This beach has a tiny fisher port and a military lighthouse. Besides it laid back atmosphere it offers also one of the few black sand beaches.

The Murcia Coastline - Calblanque Regional Park

The park Calblanque is about 13km long and in the middle is an access road. This access road is unpaved and runs some 4km across a hill to a couple of beaches and a parking lot. The park was empty and only one other car was in the park as I entered about one hour before sunset. As I arrived it started to rain. I had no desire to get soaked and given that it would be dark soon I decided to spend the night right there in the parking lot next to the beach. The couple of the other car apparently had decided the same thing. I had my simple dinner in the back of my van and went to bed at sunset. The rain didn't stop banging on the metal roof of the van. For hours and hours the rain continued. I was getting worried. I was at the end of a dirt road. There was only one way out of the national park: to drive the same way back that I drove in. With all the rain the dirt road could turn into a mud bath and my van might not be able to make the steep portions in the mud. I got worried that I might get stuck. As I woke up in the morning it was still raining. With all the rain there was no reason to get up early. Finally an hour after sunrise the rain stopped. I got out to take a look at the beaches and at the road. Now at daylight it looked a lot less steep than in my imagination the night before. My worries disappeared and in fact I had no problems in leaving.

By van I circled around the park and parked at the eastern end of the park, at a village and beach called Calareona or Cala Reona. From here I hiked on a pedestrian trail some 6km (90 minutes) back to the center of the park. The trail follows the cliffs of the coastline and gives great views of the various beaches, bays and abandoned mine shafts. The air was filled with a pleasant mixture of the smell of wild sage and the salty sea breeze. The beaches were all absolutely isolated. Not a single soul to be found anywhere. Even the most beautiful beach of the national park and despite the fact that it can be reached by car via a dirt road was empty. The relentless wind pounded Playa de Calblanque and kicked up green waves with a white top of watery foam and surf. On the hike back the views focus on the next town, Cabo de Palos, and its large lighthouse.

The Murcia Coastline - Mar Menor

Here is where the isolated beaches end and the mass tourism starts. The narrow stretch of land that closes the bay, in other words the stretch of land that separates the Mar Menor (Smaller Sea) from the Mediterranean is called La Manga (The Sleeve). When I saw La Manga for the first time I could not help it, I had to think of Varadero in Cuba. La Manga (The Sleeve) is more than 20 km (13 miles) long and narrow. Its width ranges from 100 meters in the narrowest spot to 800 meters in the widest. It is mass tourism in its purest state. La Manga is nothing else than a 20 km long chain of hotels with water on both sides.

La Manga begins with the ex-fishing village of Cabo de Palo. It still has preserved some charm, although its prime income comes no longer from fishing. Along the port are restaurants specializing in seafood and from the large light house, still in use today, are good views along the flat and long uninterrupted beach of La Manga. Passing miles of hotels on the single road of La Manga one reaches Veneziola, the last set of hotels and apartments. Here the road ends. One has to leave the same way as one came. Depending on your mood this might be a nice cruise. The views are nice. On both sides of the Sleeve are sand beaches and people are active in wind surfing or similar water sports. Today the ocean appeared in a light green and aggressive. It was windy and the sky was covered in dark rain clouds.

On the western shore of the Mar Menor are smaller villages or towns like Los Nietos, Los Alcázares, Santiago de La Ribera, and San Pedro del Pinatar. They have one thing in common: they all have beaches, a seafront promenade and are used for water sports, mostly sailing. I wasn't impressed by any of these villages.

In the north edge of the Mar Menor is the village of Lo Pagán. It is quite attractive. It has some old wind mills right on the coast, beaches and the typical beach boulevard lined with seafood restaurants. From this village a narrow stretch of land forms the peninsular that closes the Mar Menor to the north. Part of this peninsular is a protected nature preserve named "Salinas y Arenales de San Pedro del Pinatar". The preserve includes a series of salt pans of which some are used by companies for the production of salt. This is an old tradition. Salt production most likely started with the Romans. Even today you can see the heaps and mountains of salt next to the road. The rest of the salt flats are used by birds on the migration routes to Africa. Above all pink flamingos spend some of their time here. The salt flats border sparsely populated idyllic beaches.

The Alicante Coastline

Continuing my beach tour in eastern direction, the first town in the Alicante Province is Torrevieja, well known for its weekend and summer apartments. What was once a small village has grown to a city. Torrevieja is nothing special. It is hard to understand why it is so popular with tourism. It has two small city beaches, a long boardwalk and not much more. A couple of miles north of Torrevieja is La Mata which has a long flat and sandy beach.

The next better known town after Torrevieja is Guardamar del Segura. This is where I was heading. My girl friend's parents have an apartment here and we all planned to spend a week together. Beaches are plentiful in Guardamar. Guardamar also has some 6 km of uninterrupted sandy beaches; good for long strolls in an ocean breeze. But don't expect isolation or solitary stretches. Depending on the day and on the weather the beaches might be crowded like cans of sardines, well visited or sparsely populated. Guardamar is famous for its sand dunes that can be found on both sides of the main beaches. In the past, a few decades ago, the sand dunes started to invade the town. Pine forests have been planted to stop the advance of the sand towards the town. These pine forests still exist and make great parks to enjoy a picnic close to the ocean. In the partial shade of the pine forest you can stroll up and down the sand dunes that are up to 10 or 15 meters high. Once on top of the largest sand dunes you enjoy a great view of the coast, all the way from the village to the yacht harbor and the river mouth where the river Segura meets the ocean. For even better views you have to walk up to the castle from the 13th century. There is not much left from the castle, just a set of walls and a small empty tower, but the views have not faded with the time. Besides the coastline from the castle you can also see how the urbanization sprawl spreads out more and more and how today the town's construction projects advance towards the sand dunes rather than the sand dunes towards the town.

One Thousand and One Beaches