Salinas de Santa Pola Natural Park

This is the yellow route in the natural park situated only a few meters from El Pinet. This route through the salt grasses takes an hour and a half and you can stop at various observation decks along the way.

If you do the route in June, like us, everything is at its peak: the ponds are fully of water and are ready to be harvested. Everything is balanced in these salt lakes too; the red color indicates that there are brine shrimp present and this circle of life guarantees that the flamingos and other birds can live and eat at these salt lakes.

The salt lakes also have an exceptional dune system, pine forests, the Tabarca island there on the horizon, and, of course, the wonderful beach.

It’s a huge joy to see the enormous extentions of water invade this nature reserve. As is seeing the flock of flamencos (there could thousands) that wander from one side to the other, looking for food. It’s a true pleasure to see the freshwater wetlands and the extensive areas whitewashed by the salt. It’s definitely a relaxing walk with several places to take gorgeous pictures of the many species of birds.

This location was declared a nature reserve first in 1988 by the Valencian town hall and then again in 1994 by Spain, with the aim to preserve to few “natural jewels” that still remain on Alicante’s white coast.

Santa Pola salt mines, if only you could imagine the number of times that I’ve come here since I was a kid. The way that they extract the salt has always seemed extremely interesting to me, I invite you to come and check it out for yourself.