Pink lake in Spain? Sure there is! A lot of people have heard of this place but for some reason, they have not yet been here. Almost everyone we talked to had plans to go there but no one could tell us how it was. When we heard about a pink lake in Spain – we got in our car (and home) and went there!

Pink lake in Torrevieja

When you get to the street where you can park your car (or in our case – our motorhome), you will be disappointed and feel like you have been cheated. Why? When you see the lake you can’t see the pink. It just looks like your regular lake. But there will be magic made here so don’t drive off. Park your car and walk down to the lake.

Suddenly the lake turns pink. Yes pink! You can’t see the phenomenon until you are pretty close but once you see the water turn pink in front of your eyes you will be impressed. It is said that the water is more or less pink during the year. We were there in November and the water was really pink. However, there is not a “best time to visit” because that has to do with the bacterias that are the once that are making the water milkshake pink.

Finding the Torrevieja Pink Lake

Torrevieja Pink Lake also known as Laguna Salada de Torrevieja or Laguna Rosa de Torrevieja is not a huge tourist attraction, something that made us wonder. We are not sure why there are not more tourists here but we think that it might be due to the location. This is not a place where you get of a bus and here you are. There are no shuttle buses taking tourists to this place. To get here you might need a car or other form of transportation. But don’t let that discourage you from visiting this place because it is truly amazing.

You will park your car in a residential area and you can see your car at all times so there is no need to worry that you have to leave your car behind. We felt safe to leave our motorhome there and Mini is quite picky of where he will leave our car.

What makes the lake pink?

The easy answer is that it is that there are bacterias in the water and that they are the once that make the water turn pink. And I will keep this post to the simple answer because I don’t know anything about how these things work so I won’t get into that more. However, if you walk along the lake further, you will see that the water will lose some of its pink color – instead, you will see a lot more salt here.

The salt lakes of Torrevieja are nature reserves and it is no longer allowed to swim in the lakes. The water here has a salinity of 300 grams per liter – which sounds super cool to float in but since there is still salt mining in the lakes they have prohibited the bathing. Each year there is about 700 000 tons of salt produced here. The salt is used for cooking but it is also used for making the roads less slippery during winter and in the textile industry.

Our visit to the Pink Lake

I have been busting my head here – trying to figure out on whether to write the harsh truth here.  The thing is that we did not bathe here. However, I did walk out in the water and walk around while we were there. The thing is that we did not see any signs about the prohibition of bathing. We have no idea if we came from the wrong direction or how we could have missed the sign. I found out about the “non-bathing in the lake” for the first time when I started to write this post and I wanted to know more about the place.

I thought that it might be better to skip the part about entering the water but at the same time, I want to be truthful. They should have signs up everywhere if they want to keep people from the water. Since it was really cold during our visit there I just walked out in the water. Salt is good for your health so I figured that it would be like a spa treatment for my feet. And it was nice but at the same time, it was quite painful. I ended up taking a stroll, posing for pictures and picking some salt to use for cooking.

We want to be clear that we don’t promote you to get into the water here. It is not allowed and you should not break the law!!!

The pink lake with flamingos

While searching for information about this place I also came across some amazing pictures of the lake with flamingos in it. We were not that lucky and did not see any flamingos. However, they are supposed to be here so keep your eyes out!

Information about the pink lake:

Address: Calle del Lago, 03184 Torrevieja, Alicante, Spain
Opening hours: All day every day but you are better off coming here during the day since you will se the pink color of the lake better than during the evening and night.
Entrance fee: Free of charge!

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