Aracena

We slept pretty well considering we were on a main road and I slept all the way through until 6am.
Our journey today was to take us 20 miles down the road to Aracena and the Cave of Wonders so the first thing I did after my coffee was to book tickets for 12pm at €18 each. The tickets are a tourist ticket that get us into the caves, the castle and the ham museum. Aracena is famous for it’s special breed of pigs that live on the side of the hills and feed only off of acorns that give rise to a very expensive cured ham,
After filling up with fresh water at Minas de Riotinto, famous for it’s iron mines, we reached Aracena at 10:30am and found a free Motorhome area as soon as we entered the town that is 10 minutes from the cave and we have a great view of the castle.
We got to the Gruta de las Maravillas at 11:45am and we entered at 12pm. There is a strict no photographs policy and only Spanish speaking guides so I couldn’t take a camera which I was gutted about but we did manage to stay near the back of the party of 30 and I snapped a few sneaky photos on my phone. These were some of the most beautiful caves we have been in and everywhere we looked was like a scene from a fantasy movie.
The tour took around 50 minutes and I’d rather pay more money, take longer to look around and be able to take photos.
From the caves we then went to the castle and church.
The church is the oldest building in Aracena dating back to the 10th-12th century it was quite fascinating inside and they had photographs of them carrying the one true cross that is inside. It’s funny because the town we went to a week ago also had the one true cross. This just proves how exploitive this religion business is.
Next to the church was the remains of Aracena castle and really it’s just a shell of what it was but archaeologists have done an amazing job of uncovering former settlements underneath the castle from before it was built so as you walk around you can see the layers of history over thousands of years.Baca lagi