Bolger Family Travels: Pinares del Rodeno: Cave Paintings

The Pinares de Rodeno is only five-six miles outside of Albarracin. It is a protected landscape (which means it is protected, but it's not clear what exactly it means). It has dramatic red sandstone cliffs, called "rodeno." It's also a beautiful pine forest, as well as limestone rocks up higher. There are gorges created by ancient waterways.

The area is also famous for rodeno pine, which has a rough reddish bark (see pictures below) that are used for resin. There are also junipers, and various oak trees.

It is a UNESCO World Heritage site because of the Levantine rock/cave art, dating from approximately 7,000 years ago. There is a significant amount of rock/cave art throughout eastern Spain, ranging from 10,000 to 4,500 B.C. Most of the figures represent humans hunting, animals, or the cooking of animals.

Anyhow, after driving around the park for a bit to get the lay of the land, and marveling at the red rocks, the rodeno pines (reddish bark), we parked and walked towards what we hoped was an overlook. It would have been, but Dan Snyder didn't own the property, so the trees ruined the view. That said, it was neat to walk through the forest for a bit.

The one red cliff we could see clearly from

our short hike. We could see other red cliffs

while driving, but the road was so tight

there was no place to pull over and

admire the view.

Rodeno pine tree bark. Never

seen it before, so we were

quite taken with the coloring.

Imagine whole forests of this

tree. Very cool.

We doubled back and parked at the main lot. There was a helpful map that wasn't much help. By that I mean the map was great, but you could not tell where the actually trails started. Most of the people parking in the lot were rock climbing. Their massive, oversized rock climbing crash pads gave them away. The crash pads must be ultra light, because they are massive.

I kept wondering what happens if you end up, instead of falling onto the crash pad, a falling climber dropped to the ground next to the pad. While Wiley E. Coyote survived his cliffs falls, I'm not sure a human who misses the crash pad would bounce right back up and start chasing Roadrunner with a random Acme product. I would think there would be a rescue involved.

As we were packing up the car in Albarracin, three guys wearing crash pads on their backs went to their car. We speculated about why/where they would camp in Albarracin. Maybe there was a small courtyard they are allowed to bunk down in? It didn't make sense to me, as they really didn't have much other camping gear. We finally figured it out at the parking lot of Pinares del Rodeno, as one of the crash pads had "crash pad" in big letters on it. We're college graduates but it took us longer than it should have to figure it out.

Anyhow, we asked some 20 something year old women where the red trail starts. They didn't know. But two guys jumped in and mansplained the trail. And thank goodness they did, because, as men often are, they were right.

We kept seeing a specific word, followed by a series of nouns. We figured out that meant a specifically named rock art on the trail. Actually, it was off the trail, so we headed up through a rising gorge between two massive rock formations. It wasn't going particularly smoothly for team Carol/Glen, until a nice fellow pointed to stairs cut into the rocks on one side, and noted it was both the easier way to go AND would take us to the first rock art/cave painting.

Grateful for the direction, we cut over to it, and slowly, yet steadily made our way up to the rock art. It was pretty cool; you could clearly make out the animals. After admiring that for a while, we followed the trail, looking for both the view and the next set of cave paintings, until we came to sign that said the trail ended there. It made no sense, but we had fought the good fight, lost, gave up, and turned around. Well, we'll always have the first bit of rock art (which was protected in a cave by a barred fence that was, at least, wide enough between bars to fit the camera through.

Even though we didn't see as much as I had hoped, we did get the gist of it all. After all, it's not every day you get to see 7500 year old cave paintings.