Beaches
The privileged location of San Pedro del Pinatar situated between the Mediterranean Sea and the Mar Menor makes it possible to offer the visitors up to 14 km of beaches, each of them different to the others.
In the Mar Menor, Villananitos, La Puntita and La Mota are quiet beaches, crystal clear shallow waters, ideal for sailing and swimming.
They all are fully-equipped as far as infrastructure is concerned. La Mota beach, located along the way which connects the Quintín and Calcetera windmills, gives wonderful views of the Mar Menor.
In the Mediterranean, La Llana beaches, namely Las Salinas, Barraca Quemada and Punta de Algas are open and deep, with fine sand dunes and warm waters.
Natural reserve
The natural Reserve of Las Salinas de San Pedro is a unique Mediterranean landscape, where you can see, in a little space, morphological formations such as saline, salt marshes, reed beds, beaches, dunes, weirs (traditional fishing system of Mar Menor through which fishes coming in from the Mediterranean to the lagoon are caught with a complex labyrinth of wood and canes) as well es pine forests on sand. It also has a particularly large bird-life.
The salt marshes are as old as men in this environment. They were already mentioned in some documents of the fourteenth century. The two wind mills still standing were used during several years to raise the water from the Mar Menor into the storage lagoons. Today they have been replaced by electric pumps, but its silhouette still presides the landscape.
There are two itineraries. The first one starts from the parking beside the road leading from San Pedro del Pinatar to the harbor. There's a reception center with maps and information about the flora and fauna of the park.
The marked route runs along a lagoon and a reserve of fauna down to the beach. Further on, towards the north, the path turns into a zone of dunes, passing close to the Mirador tower and, after skirting the pinewood, it comes back to the road and parking.
The second option allows visiting the southern part of the salt marshes and the fishing canals (encañizadas) of the Mar Menor. It goes from the mill "Calcetera", which can be reached by walking along a dirt track that starts at Quintin mill, taking advantage of the area of land that separates the salt marshes and the lagoon. From the mill "Calcetera", a path runs along the salt marshes and reaches the beach of Punta de Algas and La Llana.
The park is a very fragile and delicate ecosystem, so you have to be extremely careful to walk just for the places indicated, not to step on the dunes or vegetation and do not disturb the birds.
It is forbidden to carry loose dogs, making fire, camping and parking outside authorized areas. Binoculars will facilitate the bird watching.
