A day trip to Guadalest valley

Today I put my imaginary tourist hat on and went on a day trip to the Guadalest valley, ranked no 1 of all the attractions in the Alicante area on Tripadvisor.

Of course I knew this was a tourist trap, but my dear AirBnB host had begun hinting that I should do something else than programming and going to the beach all day. And to be honest, it looked kind of nice.

To get to the valley I had to take the tram to the neighboring, tourist-flooded city Benidorm and then a public bus. This bus only went once a day so I needed to have precise timing in order to not miss in.

In my usual manner I calmly ate my breakfast for way too long and ended up running 2K, catching the tram thanks to a well timed red light with 5 seconds to spare. Perfect timing.

On the bus, I noticed how I was the only one younger than 60, except for one chinese girl who seemed to avoid any social contact no matter what. I didn't care much though, since I enjoy exploring things alone anyway.

Well at the valley, the tourist trap was even worse than I thought. The place was crawling with fat, elderly people, eating crap food for outrageuos prices. The views were sick though!

Looking out from the the established view point, I noticed a distant ruined tower on top of a rock. It looked like it wouldn't be a problem climbing it. Since there wasn't anything to do in the village anyway, I went for a little adventure.

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After approaching the rock from a few different angles with no good path to be found I encountered a man with a donkey. Asking him about the way in my crackling Spanish, he showed me a hidden path between some rocks on the cliff-side.

Hidden path between the rocks

Hidden path between the rocks

The path was way steeper than I imagined.

The path was way steeper than I imagined.

I had to fight my way through thorn bushes and past snakes to get to the top, but standing on top of the wall with a view of the entire valley, knowing that envy tourists were probably wondering what crazy person I was from the other side, made the entire trip worth it.

View from top of the tower walls

View from top of the tower walls

All in all the roundtrip cost me about 12€ + 2:50€ for the most expensive popsicle ever. Well worth it, as long as you stay away from the crowd.