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Clare
Clare

Day 3: Cartagena and San Pedro del Pinatar

It was a bright sunny day when we woke up in Totana this morning and it seemed like the sky might actually be blue, at least for a while. We had breakfast on the patio outside the house, accompanied by Tim's new best friend.

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The plan for today was to drive to the city of Cartagena, about 40 miles southeast of Totana.

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Cartagena is a coastal city, so we were greeted by some lovely views as we parked near the port.

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Cartagena looks like a really interesting city, with lots to explore.

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We'd come for one main reason though: Roman remains.

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Cartagena is home to a Roman amphitheatre, built over 2000 years ago.

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We queued for a while to buy tickets for the attached museum, before making our way through a tunnel and into the amphitheatre itself.

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In the middle ages the old town of Cartagena was built on top of the ruins of the theatre, with the result that it was lost for centuries and only rediscovered during some construction work in 1988.

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Today it's a popular tourist destination, so there were plenty of other people around as we explored.

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We were able to climb down the steps to the bottom of the amphitheatre...

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...and then climb back up the steps all the way to the top again!

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From the top you could really see how huge the theatre is.

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There were some good views out towards the town and the mountains beyond as well.

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Once we'd finished enjoying the views of the Roman theatre, we ventured down into the more modern centre of Cartagena.

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We found a nice restaurant to get some lunch...

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...then walked back towards the coast where we'd left the car.

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Our next stop was a place called San Pedro del Pinatar. There's a nature park here, built around a series of salt flats.

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The park is famous for two things. The first of these is pink water!

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I wasn't sure whether it was really going to look pink, but once we parked and got out of the car we found that the water genuinely was bright pink :o

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Wow!

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The unusual pink colour comes from a particular type of algae which lives in the saline waters here.

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Before we came here I'd read some reviews of people online saying that they'd come here and been disappointed, but I don't think we could really have asked for water any pinker than this :)

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The second thing which the area is famous for are these...

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Yes, that's right, flamingos :o 

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It'd seen conflicting reports online about what time of year they're around here, so I wasn't sure whether we'd actually get to see them...

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..so it was pretty cool that we did :)

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Some of them looked almost white, but others were clearly very pink :)

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It was a very unusual experience, but really fun.

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We went to have a look at the beach on the other side of the salt flats...

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...but found it wasn't really anything to write home about.

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It had been quite a long day by this point, we headed back to the house for another relaxing evening :) 




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