Spain is a beautiful country with a rich history, amazing culture, delicious food, and also a pink lake!

What the what?!? You thought pink lakes were only in places like Australia or Mexico? Nope, Spain’s got one too!

A couple hours south of Valencia is the little beach town of Torrevieja, and there is where you will find la Laguna Salada de Torrevieja. The pink lake is actually one of two salt lakes in Torrevieja, the other one is a beautiful turquoise color, and salt has been mined from the lakes for decades as the areas main export.

The lake gets its pink color from the bacteria and algae that thrive in highly saline conditions. The water itself is a little murky and milky looking, but is so salty you’ll float right on top (much like the Dead Sea).

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Seeing the lake in person was pretty awesome, although walking up to it from afar, I was like “wait what? It doesn’t look pink! All those photos I saw must have been photoshopped!”. It wasn’t until we got a little closer that you could really sea the pink color, and it definitely is pink, no photoshop needed!

We spent the afternoon exploring around the shore and floating in the warm water. We saw many locals putting the mud on their skin like a face or body mask as it’s rumored to have “healing and healthy” properties, and exfoliating with the large salt crystals. It’s kind of like a giant pink spa.

What to know for visiting the pink lake:

• Bring a jug of water to rinse off with after, the dried salt on your skin will make for an itchy and unpleasant journey home.
• Have sandals to bring in the water, there are rocks and the large salt crystals can be sharp and difficult to walk on.
• Only use public trails to get to the lake, there are a lot of houses around and if a trail looks like it’s going through someone’s yard, it probably is. There are plenty of public access points to use so be considerate.

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Getting there:

• Getting to Torrevieja was not the easiest thing, but we figured it out. We took the train down the coast towards Valencia from Barcelona to the end of the line at Alicante. From there we took a 45 minute taxi ride to Torrevieja. There are also busses that go from Alicante to Torrevieja.
• To get to the lake from our Air BNB we went on a walking adventure. I call it an adventure because we definitely got a little lost, but hey, that’s part of the fun. We eventually found an open park area with public access but we definitely spent a good amount of time wandering through the neighborhood thinking we could find a short cut. Below is a walking map of the easiest ways to get to the lake and where we went in.

So if you are looking for something unique to do in Spain that is a little off the beaten path, I’d highly recommend visiting Torrevieja and the salt lake there. We didn’t get the chance to see the other turquoise lake but the pink lake was beautiful! And you better believe that when I’m back in the area I’ll go see the other lake too!

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