Almuñécar Trip - Marci

Contrary to what many people believe based on my Instagram feed, EVS is not all about travelling and exploring Spain – I spent a day or two a week doing something like that, and mostly just to places really close to Granada. But occasionally I do venture further, and this time we decided to go on a trip together with Kürsat and Hanna, as well as Ivana, another EVS volunteer from Slovakia who was in Granada visiting us. We decided to go to the coast, to Almuñécar to enjoy the beach and chill out.

The trip to Almuñécar is pretty easy, it is about an hour and a half by bus from Granada, so it’s actually not that much closer than Malaga. Of course, if you have a car, the difference would be bigger. But the ride is really beautiful, because it goes around the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and through the mountains with lakes and great views all the way to the coast.

My first impression of Almuñécar was that it is quite a resort-town. People come here to spend a few weeks getting sunburnt on the beach, and clearly it’s not peak season yet, so it wasn’t very crowded. A lot of the buildings are these big ugly apartment complexes, although later we found much nicer areas. But first, it was time to go to the beach! Also, later I heard there were some cool hidden spots that we missed, plus with a car, you could explore all the coast and the nearby mountains, which looked really epic!

We went to the beach to chill out, chat, read, have some snacks, swim a little and of course, get sunburnt – the latter was not on purpose of course. The water was quite cold still, but perfectly fine for a little swimming. Eventually, we decided that we need food, so we found a small local restaurant which made great calamari and ate way more than we should have…

I am not the type of person who is able to sit on the beach all day, so unlike Hanna and Kürsat, I didn’t go back to the beach, instead I went exploring and Ivana also joined me. We walked through the old town around the fort, which is actually very quaint and picturesque. Still plenty of locals around, with small winding streets and lovely buildings. Sadly, since we were there on a Sunday afternoon both the fort and the archaeological museum were closed, so we just walked on.

There was a cool viewpoint on a little peninsula with some rocks sticking out of the sea in front of it. It is a great spot to watch the sea from, but also gives you a good overview of Almuñécar. We also walked up towards the Velilla tower but realized soon that we’d miss our bus if we climbed all the way. We did find a little “unofficial” viewpoint though, which offered an interesting view After that, we just joined Hanna and Kürsat and all of us got on the bus back to Granada.