As the previous reviews indicate, visiting Atapuerca can be an unsatisfactory experience both because of the nature of the site itself and also because of all the usual difficulties about visiting times and guided tours which are common to many Spanish WHS, but are particularly awkward here. I will recount our experience and indicate that I don’t think we made the best choices!

First it is important to recognise that there are 2 “Visitor Centres” at Atapuerca

a. CAREX – Centro de Arqueologia Experimental. Also called “Parque Arqueologico y reception de visitiantes Atapuerca”. This is situated north of the excavation site near to the village of Atapuerca (42.379218 -3.501280)

b. CAYAC – Centro Accessos a los Yaciementos. This is situated just east of the village of Ibeas de Juarros on N120 (42.334178 -3.524889).

Then there are the excavations themselves at the famous railway cutting or “Trinchera” where the caves of Elefante, Grand Dolina and Galeria are still being excavated. These are situated a couple of kilometres north of CAYAC along a gravel road at 42.350692 -3.519595. After you turn off the N120 at the Visitor Centre there is an almost immediate left turn to it – however if you don’t make that turn but continue, you will reach the excavations.

And then finally there is the Museo de la Evolucion Humana in Burgos (Not of course part of the inscribed site) at 42.339120 -3.697158. This has 1 complete floor devoted to the Atapuerca discoveries where one can obtain an excellent explanation of the entire site across the millennia and see some of the actual discoveries. It is from this location that a number of organised tours leave at published times by bus – varying according to the season and the day of the week – on which you can see various combinations of the above. If you are staying in Burgos without transport this seems the best way of taking in the site(s)

But what if you have your own transport or are adamantly against joining a group tour? Without understanding the above, we first reached CAREX having followed the road signs to “Atapuerca” and thinking initially that this was “it” This is a shiny new building which is free to enter and has rather mediocre displays about the inhabitants and ways of life of the people of Atapuerca . We enquired about tours to visit the excavations and bought tickets (Eur 6 pp) for one leaving at 12.15 – except, we were told, that it left from “another place”. This turned out to be CAYAC which we were told how to drive to (only around 11kms). We didn’t enquire further about other offerings at CAREX which consist of a visit to the park which is set up to demonstrate the way of life of Paleolithic people and to provide opportunities to knap flint, fire bows and arrows etc!

It might be worth mentioning that at the back of the hall was a further exhibition area titled “Sexo en Piedra” (situated just beyond where the kiddies could play at such paleolithic activities as using flint to scrape animal skins!). Apparently this is a travelling exhibition put together by Javier Angulo and Marcos Garcia who, in 2005, published a book with full name of “Sexo in Piedra, Sexualidad, Reproduccion y Erotismo en Epoca Paleolitica”! (see http://www.abebooks.com/book-search/author/javier-angulo-marcos-garcia/ ) It appeared that the exhibit had been stationed at CAREX for a couple of years but Reception didn’t know for how much longer!! Among individual exhibits were those titled “Sexo Oral”, “Zoofilia” and “La Estimulacion”. These displayed the cave drawings and paintings which are not normally brought to the attention of visitors!! I noted that a few of them came from the Coa Valley and others from Vezere. Although the exhibit is located at the Centre for Experimental Archaeology I saw no indication that any “experimental” work on the subject was taking place!

After that surprisingly “interesting” (!!) additional exhibit we moved on to CAYAC - another enormous spanking new building which didn’t seem to have enough to fill it. There were, however, some interesting exhibits in the form of models and reproductions and good notice boards in Spanish and English explaining the geology and archaeology of the area – but nothing original. At around 12.25 a bus turned up for our 12.15 tour. This already had passengers who, I presume, had joined at the Museum in Burgos. 2.4kms later we were all (40+?) deposited at the Excavations where there was a huge structure covering much of the railway cutting, surrounded by wire fencing and with a manned security cabin. We, however, were led round to the left and up a path to the top of the cutting along which we walked until a gate was unlocked and we all clambered down a series of steps built into scaffolding to the floor (we had been issued with hard hats for this). There we were treated to a c1 hour lecture in Spanish. Now I have no problems with the lecture being in Spanish – we were in Spain and there were too many visitors to try to handle multiple languages, but why does this have to be the “only” way of getting to the floor of the cutting? And it wasn’t even as if the lecture related specifically to what we were looking at – the guide had a series of aids such as plastic skulls and was clearly giving a general lecture on paleolithic man much of which could have been given anywhere – including those enormous Visitor Centres! Even many of the Spaniards in our group seemed to find the lecture not particularly interesting. As for us – well there were notice boards on English/Spanish which explained the area we were in (The entire group was only taken in front of Galeria and Grand Dolina with our view of Elefante being limited to a brief one from the upper path). The “caves” themselves (not really “caves” any longer since the millennia had filled them with strata of detritus from human occupation, rain washed sediments, rock falls etc and it was these strata which contained the material of interest) were partially hidden by scaffolding to enable the archaeologists to reach all the areas but their face was clearly marked by signs indicating the various historical levels together with vertical cords creating a grid to locate any find. I was reminded very much of Zhoukoudian and Tabun Cave at Mt Carmel. After the lecture we climbed back to the top and our bus returned us to the Visitor Centre – arriving at 2.01, just in time for it to have closed for the afternoon thus precluding any possibility of revisiting the exhibition or of using the “servisios”!!

Looking back, it was clearly a mistake to take the Excavation tour. Unless it is very important to you to visit the floor of the Trinchera (but IMO the view from the bottom looking up at the “caves” isn’t much different from that at the top looking down!! See photo from the top) or want a lecture in Spanish I would give it a miss – thus saving both the time, the money and the hassle of arranging to fit in with tour timings. Out of interest I asked the guide whether it was possible to visit the excavations solely from outside the fence and was told that they weren’t allowed to say yes but that “no one would stop us”. Clearly Fundacion Atapuerca wants to maximise its “tourist take”! In fact the upper path (which is still inside the inscribed area by the way) actually has descriptive boards placed outside the fences so it seems clear that such visits were envisaged – but you will see no sign at the turn to the Visitor Centre to indicate this and, when we bought our tickets at CAREX, this possibility was never offered, despite the fact that it was clear that our limited Spanish wasn’t up to the lecture. So John Booth below chose what, in my view, was the best option. The only slight issue is that he walked from the road – what about taking a car? Well there is a Car Park with a “P” sign in front of the Excavation security barrier. There were only 2 cars there when we arrived - both I suspect belonging to security staff. But there is no notice on the road past the visitor centre to indicate that it is not “public” and I would be very surprised if it were prevented. I also note that Google maps shows an alternative shorter drive from CAREX to CAYAC which uses the gravel road and goes quite close to the excavations.

So, our recommendation - take in each of the Visitor Centres together with the excavations from outside the fence and then make sure you visit the Museo de la Evolucion Humana in Burgos – whether it is better to see this before or after the Excavations I am not sure. Probably the latter – unless you are a Jubilado in which case it is FREE anyway so no problem in taking it in twice!