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.

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.

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.

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.