San Pedro Cove on Foot from Las Negras

San Pedro is a cove with no road, north of Las Negras, on the volcanic coast of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar natural park. You reach it on foot along a path that skirts Cerro Negro or by boat from Las Negras. It is the first stage of the official San Pedro-El Plomo-Agua Amarga trail, which in full measures 11.1 km, is estimated at four and a half hours and which the Junta rates as medium-high difficulty. Going to San Pedro and back from Las Negras takes a morning.

From El Estanquillo to the castle

From Las Negras a track leads north to the El Estanquillo farmstead, half a kilometre away. There, past the Las Negras ravine, the trail begins, beside a car park of about twenty spaces. The path follows a corridor to the north-east with Cerro Negro on your right; once past it, the view of the inlet opens up, with San Pedro in the distance. The track ends at a path where you turn right to go down to the cove by the slope that falls to the sea.

Before going down, the Junta's sheet points out a spot, about four hundred metres of climb up the slope, from which you can see the coast as far as Los Lobos hill and its tower, El Playazo and the castle of San Ramón. In the gaps of the cliff nest seabirds, mostly yellow-legged gulls.

A cove with a castle and a spring

At the entrance to the cove is the castle of San Pedro, which began as a garrison and was later enlarged as a bulwark of the coast; in 1743 a British ship bombarded it for a whole day and left it almost destroyed. Today San Pedro is a small settlement, with vegetable gardens, that lives off one of the few freshwater springs of this coastal sierra. The Junta reminds visitors to make sure the water from the springs is drinkable before drinking it, and along the whole trail camping, lighting fires, fishing and catching animals are forbidden.

If you continue to Agua Amarga

From San Pedro the trail continues along the Rellana de San Pedro and Punta Javana to the Plomo cove, a former fishing hamlet still inhabited, skirts the Cerro de la Higuera to the Enmedio cove and, after the hardest climb of the route and the Cerro del Cuartel, ends on the outskirts of Agua Amarga. It is linear: if you do it in full, leave a car at each end or ask about the buses in the area, which according to the Junta are run by Alsa, Autocares Bernardo and Frahemar.

Without a scrap of shade

The sheet sums it up: little or no shade. Between June and September, in the midday sun, the path becomes hard going; set out at dawn or leave the route for autumn and spring. Take plenty of water, a hat and shoes with a firm sole: the terrain is stony.

To eat afterwards, Alacena Azul is in Rodalquilar, a few minutes by car, and the morning combines with a visit to Rodalquilar and its gold mines.