It is just after seven. The breakfast room of our hotel will not open for another hour. Nobody is at the pool yet, let alone on the beach. So we have the bay all to ourselves. A broad brush of blinding light dances on the waves as we swim out. By the time the other guests show up, we're long gone. Up in the Sierra Bèrnia.

A view that has it all

It's hard to believe how quickly you arrive here in the solitude of the mountains. A few turns and we are in another world. The air smells of rosemary and juniper. A narrow path leads to a rock face that juts out like the flank of a huge white bull. After an hour and a half, we reach the hole for which this hike is famous. It leads directly into the rock. On our knees, we slide through a natural tunnel more than 20 meters long, then the passage opens to a wide, ivy-covered gate. We are amazed. Not at the magnificent bay deep below us. It's the one we swam in this morning. It's the pointy teeth on the horizon that excite us, the skyscrapers of Benidorm, the "little Manhattan" of the Costa Blanca. In the summer, the population of this seaside resort swells from 70,000 to more than a million. A strange planet that has nothing to do with the chirping of insects up here.

The hinterland of the famous coastal strip is one of the most mountainous regions in Spain. The adventures you can experience here are only a few kilometers away from the tourist centers. But also on the coast itself you can make tours that are really something special.

Up and down the Vall de Laguar

Our third route is a classic. The tour in Vall de Laguar is called the "Cathedral of Hikes" in the guidebooks. But the cathedral is more like a minaret, marked by thousands of steps carved into the rock by the valley's former Muslim inhabitants to facilitate cultivation of the terraced fields. Passing gardens and fields, almond and olive trees, cacti and oleander bushes, we descend into the canyon. The whole thing is repeated three times. Three descents, three ascents. After the shadowless tour in Vall de Laguar, we deserve to cool down and scramble over the cliffs to Cova Tallada on our last day of hiking south of Dénia. The dimly lit cave is a popular snorkeling spot. 

Spain's smallest national park

The second walk takes us to the smallest natural park in Spain and starts between the high-rises of Calpe. Just behind the hotels and apartment buildings, a peninsula juts out into the sea. It consists of a single gigantic rock. The Peñón de Ifach is 332 meters high and so steep that from a distance it is hard to imagine how to reach this sea-washed peak. The solution to the mystery is a tunnel, but in this case it was bored by human hands through the imposing north face. Some passages are secured with ropes and chains, in many places the rock is bony, but the tour is not really dangerous. At the Mirador de Carabineros we stand almost vertically above the crumpled sea. In the southwest, cliff after cliff, cape after cape, we are overwhelmed.

Only recently has the region discovered hiking tourism. Today there is a wide range of short and long walks, most of them well marked. New ones are added every year. 

Cala Moraig: the road to happiness

On the way back to the hotel, we stop at a cove that was especially recommended to us. The parking lot of Cala Moraig is full, so we take one of the last spaces.  We follow the path that goes up the slope. And suddenly we know why we were sent to this place. A huge stone slab that seems to be stuck in the seabed is leaning towards us.  Then we realize that the path does not end here. A small path crosses the slope. Thorny plants cling to the limestone. A bit hairy, but what the hell. The big boulders in the water below look like a hard to reach, but all the more tempting swimming spot. We go down, we throw ourselves into the waves, we scream with joy. The Costa Blanca, we admit it, has two more fans.