"A day-trip to the gorge at Alhama de Granada" Top 5 Page for this destination Nerja Things to Do Tip by Bwana_Brown

If you have a rental car and some time to spare, you can even make a day-trip to the spectacular inland gorge at Alhama de Granada. This is another of Spain's many natural attractions, and one that tries to give Ronda a run for its money when it comes to having spectacular gorges in town - but does not quite do it!

We arrived there from Torremolinos at about 1 PM on New Year's Day and were really impressed by the gorge cut into the surrounding countryside by the Alhama River. The weak winter sun was beaming directly down the gorge at us, making it difficult to get decent photos of the quite impressive spectacle but we tried our best. It was amazing to stand on the precipice at the edge of Alhama de Granada and see the river headed straight for town (2nd photo). However, the rock walls won that battle and deflected the river east as shown in the 3rd photo. We really enjoyed our time just taking in the entire scene but, if you wish, you could be part of a group exploring the gorge itself, which can be walked from one end to the other alongside the Alhama River. If you want to return to civilization at the top of the gorge you have a choice of either steep slopes or steps (some of which are carved into the rock face) at several locations in the gorge.

As we continued east, we were amazed at the view we had of Lake Bermejales off in the distance (4th photo), a water reservoir that also serves as a great recreation area. In our case, it took us just over 2 hours to reach Nerja from Alhama (during our second visit to Nerja by way of the outskirts of Granada). However, if you are starting from Nerja, it only takes about 1 hour to cover the 69 km to Alhama de Granada by first travelling west along the Mediterranean shore before heading inland near Velez-Malaga (instead of the 148 km via our unplanned route past Granada). The mountain route from Velez-Malaga is really spectacular (as shown in my 'Torremolinos' page).

Directions: The map in my 'General' tip illustrates the relative locations of Nerja and Alhama de Granada