Pop… Pop… Pop!
Berries burst under my bicycle’s tires as I pedal along the seafront. They’re acai, blown down by a soft sea breeze from the overhanging palm trees that run the length of the promenade. Their pierced skins polka-dot the bricked terracotta street below in a deep purple hue.
I whizz past glittering boats bobbing in the marina… a couple sipping chilled rosé wine at an open-air bar… barefoot kids splashing about by the shore.
Slowing my pace, I maneuver around a snoozing golden retriever seeking reprieve from the afternoon sun in a shaded patch of the sweeping blue cycle track. His owner offers a cheery “buenos dias” by way of thanks.
I smile in return and speed up again, the wind whipping my hair into a dream home for nesting birds. I’m not sure what it is about riding a bike that makes me feel 13 again… but I know I like it.
I’m in San Pedro del Pinatar, a coastal town in southeastern Spain’s Murcia region. This is the northern end of the country’s Costa Cálida (warm coast)—a 250 kilometer stretch of Mediterranean coastline blessed with 300 days of sunshine each year.
It’s a spot well used to visitors, perhaps most notably the Romans who made use of the salt mines here to produce garum, a fermented fish sauce used to flavor food… up to more recent arrivals like myself, in town to savor laidback Spanish life.
San Pedro del Pinatar is one of four municipalities that border the Mar Menor, Europe’s largest coastal saltwater lagoon. It’s a traditional Spanish town, named for Saint Peter who protected the local fishermen at work out at sea. Dividing it and the Mediterranean sea is La Manga, a narrow, 22 kilometre-long sandbar.
It’s on this sandy spit that development in the region began in the 1960s. Apartments, restaurants, bars, and shopping malls sprung up as the government pushed the promotion of the area to vacationers across Europe.
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A decade later, the region’s place on the global tourist map was marked when U.S. golfer and businessman Gregory Peters opened his La Manga resort. Home to two golf courses and a tennis center, the resort was ground-breaking at the time.
Today, it covers some six square kilometers of land, has a third 18-hole golf course, 28 tennis courts, 8 football pitches, and a recently refurbished 5-star Grand Hyatt hotel.
It sets the tone for similar developments that dot this region, a mecca for active sun-seekers.
A half-hour drive from La Manga is a new gated lakeside community of villas and apartments surrounded by golf courses. It offers a private park, a beach club, a restaurant, and a commercial area that includes supermarkets, shops, bars, and restaurants.
Choose to call this resort home and you’re also just a 10-minute drive to the spa town of Los Alcazares, its rich history, and seven kilometres of coastline.
Rolling a little farther on up the coast, at the far end of this decades-long path of progress, butting up against the border with Alicante, is where you’ll find San Pedro del Pinatar.
Once a sleepy fishing village, its beaches, therapeutic mud baths, and protected nature reserve where you can watch flamingos dunk for their dinner, proved a draw for tourists.
There’s a good mix of restaurants, hotels, cafés, holiday rentals, boutiques, and bars here but it’s not overdone. It retains its Spanish charm and laidback feel. You won’t find nightclubs or hear much noise beyond the waves lapping past midnight in these parts.
It’s affordable, too.
There’s a good mix of restaurants, hotels, cafés, holiday rentals, boutiques, and bars here but it’s not overdone. It retains its Spanish charm and laidback feel. You won’t find nightclubs or hear much noise beyond the waves lapping past midnight in these parts.
It’s affordable, too.
At a café with sea views, the popular breakfast order, pan con tomate (toast topped with garlic, tomatoes, salt, and olive oil) is served with a fresh orange juice and a black coffee for US$6.
Or, if you’d prefer a café con leche (coffee with milk) and an empanada, US$5 will cover that bill. Dinner for two—enjoying steak and fresh fish, desserts, and drinks—won’t run you more than US$50.
Or, if you’d prefer a café con leche (coffee with milk) and an empanada, US$5 will cover that bill. Dinner for two—enjoying steak and fresh fish, desserts, and drinks—won’t run you more than US$50.
At the supermarkets too, food is impressively low cost. US$100 would more than cover a weekly grocery shop here for two. Shop at the market—which runs the length of a couple streets just off the seafront on a Thursday morning—for the freshest fish, fruit, and vegetables and you can lower that bill.
Wine doesn’t have to be an occasional luxury either, with bottles of deep reds and crisp whites starting around the US$5 mark. Pop into a bar and a chilled beer costs under US$2. Treat yourself to a second to help you adjust to a whole new kind of sticker shock.
The pleasant surprises continue as you explore the rental market. A one-bedroom, one-bathroom, furnished unit rents for US$590 a month. To buy, the same unit is US$77,000. The beach is about a 15-minute walk away.
Two-bedroom townhouses rent from US$750 a month.
A luxurious, modern villa fully-furnished and with a private pool and two terraces, rents for US$1,600 a month. Parking is included but you’re not likely to need it here in the heart of the downtown area just steps from the beach.
In terms of getting around, you could go without a car quite easily here. There’s a good local bus system for day trips and in town itself everything you need is within walking distance.
For my money, a bicycle makes errands more fun and is a great way to beat the midday heat, too. The town has great cycling routes and storage racks by most stores.
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To explore more in the region, and I certainly recommend you do, hiring a car for the occasional week or two won’t break the bank. Rentals start around US$10 a day.
Within San Pedro del Pinatar itself, you’ll find plenty to keep you occupied particularly if you’re a fan of water sports. If it floats, sails, can be rowed or paddled, you’ll likely find it on offer in the nautical club or at the town’s two marinas.
It’s these facilities that keep Florida resident Pat and his wife, Liz, returning here year after year.
“For me, this place just has it all,” says Pat, “the water, the sunshine, any store I’d need for fresh food and cold beer… My wife loves castles, history, all that stuff, so she takes off in the morning to explore. I go out in the water, come back, read my book, have a beer, take a nap… It’s perfect.”
That said, the Mar Menor hasn’t been without its problems. In 2016, due to pollution from agriculture and a period of rapid over-development in the region, the ecosystem collapsed. Further collapses followed. Eventually local authorities and activists stepped in and in the years since have been gradually introducing a mix of restoration and prevention measures in an effort to save the lagoon.
On my visit, I could see those efforts paying off… albeit in unexpected ways. Paddling in the warm waters I found myself in the company of phacellophora camtschatica, aka fried egg jellyfish. These striking, free-swimming creatures have stingers but happily don’t see fit to use them all that often and even on the occasion they do, they have little effect on humans.
In the water, I didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother me. Ditto for the dozens of other swimmers taking a dip that day and every other. I never thought I’d say this for any jellyfish but I was happy to see them in these waters, their appearance heralds a marked improvement in the lagoon’s ecosystem.
All in all, this little town is definitely on the up…
Sincerely,
Victoria Harmer, Overseas Opportunity Letter
