Benalmádena is a collage of three very different things that barely seem to know each other. Benalmádena Pueblo sits up on the mountain, a white village with geraniums and a viewpoint from where on a clear day you can see Gibraltar. Arroyo de la Miel is the busy middle town below, with the train station, parks, and Tivoli World theme park. And Benalmádena Costa is the three-kilometre beach strip with Puerto Marina — an 1980s build that deliberately looks like an Andalusian village which unexpectedly decided to become a yacht harbour.
What sets Benalmádena apart are two cultural oddities that exist nowhere else on the coast. The Stupa de la Iluminación is a 33-metre Buddhist temple built in 2003 — the largest of its kind in Western Europe. The Teleférico cable car from Arroyo de la Miel takes you up to Monte Calamorro at 770 metres in fifteen minutes, with 360° views over the entire Costa del Sol. We go up at sunset; you don't need to book and there's rarely anyone in front of you.
