There’s more to the Costa del Sol than sunshine, palms and beaches. The hinterlands reveal a subversive city, a hippie stronghold and the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains. Our author started out at sea level and climbed up to the roof of Spain.

“No, no, don’t do it!” Chris Stewart warns me, his eyes wide with alarm. The former drummer of the rock band Genesis knows what he’s talking about: He’s been a sheep farmer in the southern foothills of the Sierra Nevada for 25 years. “You want to climb the Mulhacén in this weather?” he asks incredulously, as his wife Ana serves the photographer and me sweetened mint tea. “It will be horrible! Why do that to yourself?” Why? Because the story I want to tell is the story of a journey that starts out on the shores of the Mediterranean and ends on the Spanish mainland’s highest peak.

It all began quite effortlessly three days earlier: bright sunshine and a clear blue sky over Málaga, gulls screeching, the drone of a ship’s engine. Neighboring towns, like Marbella, offer maritime spectacles complete with jet skis and catamarans, but Málaga, home to almost 600 000 people and the unofficial capital of the touristy Costa del Sol, has only the good old Pinta – a wooden boat that ferries passengers quietly around the harbor. Despite its broad, sandy beaches and charming old town, tourists used to stream right past Málaga without stopping, but a couple of years ago, the town began making more of an effort to attract visitors, partly out of necessity. The Spanish economic crisis had hit Málaga especially hard. The Norwegian Spirit, a cruise liner, is anchored in the harbor, but the cranes at the modern container terminal are still. “Business was booming here not long ago, and houses were going up all along the coast,” says Nuria Nebot, 38.

The rumor wafts through the streets, mingling with the smell of joss sticks, spices and other grasses: “Have you heard? They’ve already been! And they want to come back!” Who? “They” are the makers of the U.S. fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” and Granada is allegedly high on their list of filming locations. Indeed, the city at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains looks like a fairy tale hewn in stone – not just because of the Alhambra, that breathtaking palatial citadel towering majestically above its surroundings.

Granada is a pretty town, but it’s also vibrant and youthful; one in three of its 240 000 inhabitants studies at the city’s university. Raúl Ruiz, aka El niño de las pinturas (the painting guy), represents the more subversive side of Granada. His art, some of it almost dreamy, decorates many of the town’s walls. Today, Ruiz is one of Europe’s best-known street artists, but sadly, I am unable to arrange a meeting with him. Instead, I get Mika Bukowski to show me around the city – the 35-year-old runs graffiti tours for the guests of the Oasis backpacker hostel. We make our way through the jostling crowds of the old Albaicín district, where the streets are lined with shops selling Moroccan crafts and hippie jewelry. “Raúl is a real genius,” Mika raves, “but they still make his life difficult. He regularly gets into trouble with the cops.” The guide stops to explain a particular piece of graffiti. Then he interrupts himself: “Man, you are really lucky,” says Mika, pointing to a lanky guy with a high forehead and wild hair. “Meet the maestro himself!”

Only one euro for this pair of earrings? “I make them myself, so I can’t really charge more,” says the woman in the colorful robes standing in the small church square. You don’t find so many dropouts from society on Ibiza anymore, nor in other former hippie haunts either, but they still populate the southern foothills of the Sierra Nevada, in the Alpujarras region.

For thousands of years, mountain farmers have cultivated the barren soil here, and their white-washed villages still look like settlements in Morocco’s Atlas mountains. Over the last few decades, many people have drifted toward the cities while others have purposely headed for the hills. Hundreds of hippies now live in teepees and trailors in a commune outside Órgiva, the area’s main town, whose population of 5000 also includes close to a hundred Islamic Sufis. And 1100 meters above Órgiva, there’s a Tibetan center with a gigantic prayer wheel.

Jesús, my bearded mountain guide, looks at me searchingly. His expression speaks volumes, but he is far too polite to put his criticism of my choice of clothing into words. Sure, Mulhacén rises 3482 meters into the Spanish sky, but all the same, while I had expected the ascent to be fairly hard going, I had also anticipated some sunshine. And that’s why I hadn’t packed any special equipment other than my hiking boots. Jesús Espinosa, 52, had called me only the night before to pass on the weather report: zero degrees Celsius, mist, squalls. Didn’t I want to reconsider? No, but thanks for asking!

In the morning, we take a minibus from the mountain village of Capileira as far as Alto del Chorrillo, where the trip begins. The fog is as thick as cotton batting. When visibility is good, you can see across to Morocco from here. The photographer suffers in silence.