5 days at the Costa Blanca

Hi guys

Back from Spain, well tanned and working again.

In todays post, I'll share with you all the things we did there, in this short trip.

Day 1: Flying & visiting Vilajojosa.

We flew to Alicante, to arrive at the Costa Blanca. Then we rented a car, to drive around in the area. We got a small upgrade for only 5 euros a day, for a cabriolet car, yay!

So on day one we took the plane and went to our rental house. It was a small beachhouse in Vilajojosa. Super cute and cosy.

Day 2: Guadalest and the waterfalls of "les fonts de l' Alger".

This is the lake of Guadalest, seen from the top of the town. On top of the town, there's a small castle to visit. Here you have this view over the entire lake and the mountains.

We visited the town and visited the castle. The town is cosy and relaxed, with some souvenir shops.

After that, we went closer to the sea, where the waterfalls are located (direction of Altea).

The place is called "les fonts de l'Alger". It's cute to visit. There are a couple of natural waterfalls to discover. You can hike next to them and even swim in the water during the summertime. The water is 17 degrees celcius the entire year. The water is also cristal clear and deep turquise colored, which is my fave color!

Small sidenote: MAKE sure to wear protective clothes, because there's alert of processional caterpillars. I looked it up, and it seems that the southern pine trees can have caterpillars in them, not only oak trees (like we thought). These animals have small hairs that they can lose. The hairs fall on your skin and give you often allergic reactions. After hiking, later that day my entire body was covered with red dots and extremely itchy. I scrubbed all the hairs off my skin, washed my clothes and went to the pharmacist the next day. I got a numbing creme and anti-allergical medications. Now, even days later, I still find new dots on my skin, that are super itchy. Luckily, after a week now, my legs are not swollen anymore... but not fully healed eather...

At the end of the afternoon, we went to the coastline of Altea. Altea is a small city with white houses. We didn't visit it though.. we only went to the beach because the town didn't seem that much interesting..and it was getting late.

After that, we drove through Benidorm, to see what all the fuss is about... but Benidorm is actually pretty ugly and there's not much to see. Not much besides a lot of high buildings. To me it seemed like Dubai back in the 70s or so haha!

Day 3: Elche or Elx

Elche is a town, famous for it's palmtree grove. There are thousands of palmtrees in this city. We started our day with visiting the tropical garden of Elche. This was a very lovely place to visit, but rather small. There were ponds with fishand turtles in it, peacocks walking around and a lot of palmtrees from all over the world. We stayed here for about an hour.

After the visit, we went to the beach, near the salt lakes or "salinas".

We wanted to visit the lakes there but we didn't find a trail... I guess that you're not allowed to enter this place as a tourist. We did see some flamingo's there! White ones.

Day 4: Coastline hike at Cuna del sol.

We did a hike to a private beach there. Funny thing, we started at a gorgeous beach with white sand and cristal clear turquoise water and ended the hike at the privat beach, which was less pretty than the beach where we started. Bummer! But the hike itself was lovely. The rocky coastline is gorgeous there. On the hike there are som abandoned caves, where pirates used to live 100 years ago. Cute to see but not extremely interesting though.

Day 5: Visiting Calpe.

On the fifth day, we did the Calpe rock hike. Again, alert of caterpillars so we wore our sweaters, hot hot hot. The hike was easy in the beginning but at the ending, it was pretty hard. There were some ropes to hang on to, to climb over all the rocks. Going upwards was hard but going down was even harder haha! We did the hike to the top in about one hour.

The view there was stunning. Also: this rock is a breeding place for seagulls. So you could hear them sing, while hiking. On top of the rock; we fed some seagulls because they were begging and we have zero selfcontrol around animals. No shame though.

On top of the rock, you have a view over the coastline of the Costa Blanca. You can also see the lake of Calpe and the flamingos in it! The rock is 332 meters high and is called: Peñón de Ifach.

We also saw a pretty large snake there, apparanlty it was a Montpellier snake. It can become 2 meters long and it feeds itself with lizards, rats,...

After the hike we went to the beach and after the sunburn happening, we went to a bar for a drink and some snacks.

At the end of our trip, we visited the salted lake of Calpe, where the flamingos are. It was a pretty weird place to visit. You're in the middle of nature, where it's super calm and there's no people around, only animals... BUT in the back, you spot buildings everywhere. The contrast is very big there.

Ofcourse, I took a billion flamingo photos there!

Day 6: Visiting Alicante city and then flying back home.

Before heading back home, we visited the city of Alicante. We parked our car on top oh the hill of the castle of Alicante. The parking was guarded and it was also for free. The view over the city of pretty. The castle itself is ancient, but not too interesting to visit.

Inside the castle, there's an elevator that thakes your for free to the city center (going up costed a couple of euros).

So after that, we visited the center. There are 2 main churches that are gorgeous to visit. The center is small but lovely. And if you go to Alicante city, visit the townhall. It's free entrance and there are a couple of rooms to visit.

After the city hike, we went to the beach, to soak up the last sun...for weeks haha!