Drive into the unknown

Most visitors to the Costa Blanca stop at the obvious places — the marina in Alicante, the old town of Altea, the beach in Benidorm. The real reward of having a car here is the freedom to leave the well-marked road behind.

Drive forty minutes inland from Torrevieja and you reach the salt lakes of La Mata, where flamingos feed at dawn against a backdrop of pink water. An hour further west and the landscape shifts into the Sierra de Crevillente — sharp limestone ridges, almond groves, villages where time moves slower than the coast.

Turn off the AP-7 motorway anywhere between Alicante and Valencia and you will find roads winding through orange orchards, past abandoned watchtowers, ending at coves the package tours never reach.

A rental car gives you exactly this — the option. You can spend the day on the beach with everyone else, or you can be on a mountain road by nine in the morning and back in your apartment for dinner. That is what the unknown looks like here. It is not far. It is just past the highway exit you usually skip.