The ghosts of many Hollywood blockbusters inhabit Spain's Almería Province. Mark Jolly rides out to join them

Early on in Lawrence of Arabia, after the young Peter O'Toole receives his desert posting, he is summoned for a briefing by General Allenby's wily political adviser, Dryden. The desert, Lieutenant Lawrence proclaims, is going to be fun. But Dryden's got news for the maverick soldier: "Lawrence, only two kinds of creatures get fun out of the desert—bedouins and gods, and you're neither. Take it from me, for ordinary men it's a burning, fiery furnace." To which O'Toole deadpans: "No, Dryden, it's going to be fun."

The scene replays in my mind as I spread open maps and surmise the geographical challenges posed by a little pocket of southern Spain that forms the only desert in all of Europe. I am in Cabo de Gata, the most southeasterly point of the province of Almería, itself on the southeasterly tip of the Iberian Peninsula. I am in the San José offices of Fernando Alonso, the outfitter who is helping me make sense of my preposterous proposal.

I have ventured here—to the hottest, driest, and sunniest spot in mainland Europe—with the pipe dream of pursuing a wilderness adventure. The terrain—encompassing Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park and stretching northwest into the desert of Tabernas—suggests a certain solitude, a whole other level of disconnect. That is why I am bent on exploring this primordial landscape without any automated transport. "That," says Fernando with exasperation, "is going to be a little tricky."

What he steers me toward instead is a modest hiking/biking/kayaking/horseback-riding jaunt that will allow me to cheat here and there—to bridge the gap between the hills, where nature (or, more often, man) has made the route too inhospitable to conquer by means other than automobile. These are not quite the same sandy wastelands of Lawrence of Arabia or Once upon a Time in the West or any of the 200 other films shot here. A booming agricultural revolution (beyond the park's protected coastal areas) and a recent surge in visitors have seen to that. Yet this is still a resolutely remote part of Andalusia where package tourism is playing catch-up and where, miraculously, you can still find Spain's last virgin beaches.

With the bleak backcountry calling, I turn to my travel buddy. "This," I assure her, "is going to be fun."

Day one is designed to ease our way into the unforgiving environs, a sort of first date with scorched earth. We'll hike a gentle circuit, tracing the coastline southward from San José (once a small fishing village but now Cabo de Gata's chief vacation base) and then looping back inland through the hillsides. According to our man Fernando, it is supposed to be a two-and-a-half-hour trek, but it takes that long just to reach Playa de los Genoveses. This is no ordinary chunk of Europe. As we round a crested promontory just outside San José, we see, peeking out below from the other side, a mile-long crescent of powdery sand that dissolves to a parched open plain, fringed by a sweep of eucalyptus, and a lone dirt track climbing the hills. Descending from the cliff path, I can just make out, amid a speckle of bathers at the edge of the bay, a tiny fisherman's cabin—and nothing else. No bars, cafés, or ice-cream parlors; no condos, hotels, or beach houses. It's hard to believe we are a half-hour's drive from the barbarously overdeveloped Costa del Sol, which has swallowed most of Spain's southern coast.