Guadix Caves & Traveling by Alsa Bus in Spain

After Baza, we took an Alsa bus 40 minutes down the road to Guadix. (Gwah-deeks)

A village of 19,000 people rather inland, without much to distinguish itself other than the picturesque views and historic cave dwellings in the hills, they don't see many foreign tourists. All the tourism that goes through Guadix is other Spaniards. It's a nice little village, clean and friendly-feeling. Though it was here we began to suspect that the 'beer + free tapa' thing doesn't apply to annoying tourists who ask a lot of questions.

It was a quiet, warm walk up the hill to the cave neighborhood. The cave museum we flagged cost 2,50/person so we declined to enter and went to plan B: just walk around. Up the hill across the street from a souvenir shop, the proprietor told us her husband ran a free cave tour so we poked our heads in for about 30 seconds. Turns out there's not much to see in a cave house. It's about what you would expect. They paint the rough-hewn stone walls white so it feels less like a cave. We were about to go spend a week pet sitting in a cave, anyway (more on THAT adventure in another post) so we didn't linger.

There are several viewpoints constructed, but we just walked up on top of the roof of one of the caves and took a panorama.

The view was spectacular. The historical landmarks were beautiful. But two nights in Guadix was the perfect amount of time to explore what the little city has to offer.

From Guadix, we took another Alsa bus.

An Aside RE: Alsa

We've been taking public transportation around Spain for 1.5 months and managed to avoid renting a car (after the first hike from Madrid to Albir on our first day). The benefits of this are plentiful. It's cheaper (though if you can drive a stick, doyouspain.com might work for you), less hassle re: parking and reading road signs, plus Mr. Go gets to enjoy the scenery or read a book instead of white-knuckle the wheel.

Plus, not having a car forces us to walk or figure out the transportation system. Sometimes it's a challenge, but challenges are good for you! If we had a car, we would undoubtedly find excuses to use it, both incurring gas costs and robbing our bodies of exercise.

But for journeys too long to walk, there has been one clear hero in Spain these past weeks: Alsa.

Renfe runs trains between major cities, but Alsa has always been cheaper. They've had routes running wherever we wanted to go, even tiny little cave towns, for dirt cheap. Kids under 3 are free and kids 4-13ish (I think?) are half price.

Only one driver gave me a hard time about my (very reasonably sized) backpack, trying to make me put it in the luggage compartment under the bus. The rest have been apathetically indifferent.

Don't buy tickets online and incur a processing fee. Just go to the station just before your bus arrives and buy a ticket. Never has a bus been full (yet). I've been told you can also buy tickets from the driver, if the town doesn't have an Alsa station or point of sale. We've seen people buying tickets from the driver, but tbh I have no idea if it works all the time.

At least one Alsa bus I've ridden had a bathroom (though idk, it was labeled 'WC', but we didn't look inside). The time we needed a bathroom, on a 3-hour direct bus from Granada to Seville, the spot in the back where the WC was on the other bus was simply a locked door, so *shrug emoji*


Anyway, we took an Alsa bus to Granada; more on that in the next post!

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