Cueva de la Pileta — Attraction in Benaoján

Really glad and feel fortunate that I got to see these cave paintings. As the directions on the website and guidebooks say to do, I called the day before we wanted to go between the hours of 10am and 1pm, they answered on my first call (I don’t speak Spanish, but I greeted in Spanish in an attempt to be polite and then asked if he spoke English and spoke slowly to request a tour… which I assume is polite because it’s hard to talk in a foreign language on the phone.) Anyway, it was quick and easy. We booked two tickets for 11:30 in mid-July and they told us to arrive by 11:20 because the tour STARTS at 11:30.

While driving there the next morning, Google Maps was taking us further down the road… but we saw multiple signs mentioning the name of the cave… so we decided to follow the signs instead of Google Maps (!!!). There’s a strip of parking spaces near a cliff (it’s wide enough to turn around in the car) and almost a cul-de-sak at the end with another sign for the cave. It wasn’t 100% clear to us to go up the many steps… but we did and at the end of 3-5 minutes of climbing steps we reached the ticket counter to pay. Tip: when they say arrive 10-minutes (or more!) early… that’s because you need to walk UP to the ticket booth before your ticket time end some people will need longer to get up there. In July we wore pants and short sleeves and were fine, I had hiking shoes that did better than my partners tennis shoes. A woman in our group was wearing sandal wedges… the cave is slippery and has lots of steps up and down, I couldn’t have managed with wedges—props to her!

I’ve seen two cave paintings in France (Grotte des Combarelles and Font-de-Gaume) and absolutely loved those experiences. I’ll cherish those tours on my death bed—but those caves were unimpressive by themselves… the French cave paintings were incredible and those caves are so narrow that only 9 people can go on the tour at a time, young children aren’t allowed and you are inches from the paintings… so your view is superb and the tour is very personable. By comparison (not to compare in a negative way), Cueva de la Pileta is a stunning geological cave by itself - with beautiful cave formations, huge rooms (so the tours can be larger at like 22 people), a lake, and 18,000 bats live there! And there are cave paintings too!! I would highly recommend visiting Cueva de la Pileta and any other opportunity to see cave paintings. I appreciated that the tour was in Spanish and then English, though if I can offer a suggestion… I would have liked the Spanish speaking questions and answers translated into English because other visitors often have interesting comments or questions. Also, investing in a green pointer light to outline the cave paintings would have made following some of the explanations easier to understand… using finger shadows is not as effective because it covers the painting… it was fascinating to see paintings that were 40,000 and 20,000 and 5,000 years old. My favorites were the seal, huge flounder (?) fish, and the human with bow and arrow. Also, it was cool to carry a lantern and attempt to imagine myself as a prehistoric person carrying around oyster shells with animal fat to find my way.

In 2024, this tour cost 10€. It’s wonderful the owners make the visit so affordable. Free parking, no toilets, the guide said the cave is much wetter in the winter and also colder. I posted a photo of the exit (since you aren’t allowed to take photos inside), the entry seems small but...

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Great cave and poor tour. MUST SEE. We have been to maybe 15 caves around the world and this is the best, with the best art. Unfortunately, there are a few problems with the tour. Chief among these is the poor lighting. They give you a lantern, the kind that throws light mostly horizontally, and in the dark cave with very slippery steps one needs light to be shined DOWN, not sideways. The owners should invest in headlamps, the standard for cave lighting.

The footing is very smooth and often wet, we were not the only ones to slip, though my wife was the only one who fell down. Several times I stepped into a dark unlit step. This can easily be avoided with the right lighting.

Choice of shoes can be essential. We wore boots but we think this was a poor choice. For smooth, wet rock I think running shoes might be a better choice. In any case, the organizers should make visitors aware of the footing. You might want to bring a hiking pole, mine was essential for me.

Explanation of the art lacked clear lighting to illustrate the parts. The guide used a flashlight, then put his finger in front of the light to point at an object 5m away. How dumb is this? Ever heard of a laser pointer? When you are illustrating which part of a drawing is a head, which the antlers, which the tail, etc., a muddled finger doesn’t do it justice. I was not the only one confused when there is no need to be.

Finally, the tour was in Spanish. There was at attempt to render the high points in English, but this didn’t work very well. I was not the only person confused. Our guide often spoke in Spanish for a few minutes, followed by maybe 10 – 30 seconds of heavily-accented English. As another visitor suggested, a flyer with illustrations and explanations would make the visit much more meaningful.

The cave itself is extraordinary! The tour – poor. Too bad. We would have liked to get a lot more out of it. And we would have preferred not to...

The visit was well organised and the age of the paintings is humbling. Our guide was clearly passionate and knowledgeable about the cave and the study of this period of history.

It is also the job of the guide to raise awareness of the delicate conditions of the paintings and how, even today, we do not fully master this. Which means that, visitors really must appreciate the work and the privilege of going to see the paintings.

It would be great if there would be a centro de interpretação/museum that people could visit and tell the story so that the cave could be visited with less damage (really, deep inside, I marvelled at the fact humans had lived there but also felt that every breath could contribute to unbalancing the eco-system).

There is also a lot to be said for the historians or 'experts' who took out the skeletons found there and sold them/put them in museum storage in different countries. We need to ask ourselves in these modern times, to reflect on past practices and thought and maybe look towards more dynamic contemporary approaches to our relationship with artefacts.

If you want an easy cave to visit then La Gruta de las Maravillas in Aracena is worth it - but to go to Cueva la Pileta is to be humbled and invited...