Donana National Park

I visited this WHS in July 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic I had to cancel my trip initially planned for May and although I had already paid in full for a morning tour with Doñana Reservas, they duly refunded me the full amount within days. So this time round, I was glad to book a 4 hour morning tour inside the fenced off core area close to El Rocio.

Solivagant did an excellent job in his review to meticulously describe the subtle yet very confusing difference of the inscribed or non-inscribed areas as well as the discrepancies between the Spanish maps and the UNESCO maps. So when preparing for my trip, I made sure to print the UNESCO map and keep a digital copy of it on my mobile phone for reference, just in case.

I immediately noticed that the inhabited sandy beach town of Matalascañas was obviously not part of the inscribed area, but there was a freely accessible trail starting from the sand dunes area. These trails are readily accessible from the Playa del Coto beach right at the edge of Matalascañas and are fenced off. So after parking my car in the shade at the nearby Gran Hotel del Coto, my better half went for a swim while I registered my name with the national park ranger on duty and braved the scorching heat of the afternoon sun, glad I was back inside the inscribed area. Even though the early afternoon is not the …

March 2017- for our honeymoon we went to Andalusia. After the First nicht at the coast, we went to the deserted Hotel town, just West of the NP, parked the car and went on an 1 hour hike along the coast, in the way back went walked through the wonderful dunes. The nationalpark seems to Stretch way beyond the Horizont, but hard to visit other parts, since there are no roads. Looking at the shrubs, just behind the dunes, we saw footpaths of the famous lynx but could not spot any Cats.

That was a wonderful experience already. We continued our journey to Rocio, a Western town, all in Sand with Gauchos riding on mules. There was a festival going on, very lucky, for us since the atmosphere was great.

In rocio you can book numerous bird sighting tours to the wetlands, but since it is bordering the Nationalpark, we had a glimbs at the Fauna at the Lake from el Rocio.

If you want to go further East you have to go almost all the way back to Sevilla to cross the River Guadalquivir. It take a few hours of driving to a small ferry. We stopped at deherto de Abuelo and recommend it to everybody. Never seen that many storks at one place, not even in Masurian lakes in Poland. All in all we had a wonderful experience in Donana.

A few extra points to those made by earlier reviewers about visiting the Donana WHS.

a. There are still unanswered “issues” regarding the inscribed boundaries of this WHS which create a problem if you want to ensure that you not only see its “natural environment” but also actually cross into the inscribed area. The 2005 WHC agreed a “Minor boundary modification” which was said to “bring the boundaries of the World Heritage property in line with the extended National Park; thus the total area of the World Heritage property will be 54,251.7 ha”. The following map titled “Boundary as extended by the 29th session of the WHS” (sic) was then lodged with UNESCO. Nb the “shape” of the NW of the Parque around El Rocio – a straight line following the A483 to the coastal developments.

b. However, maps of the Parque Nacional (PN) which we saw at visitor centres did not coincide with these boundaries. These 2 examples of maps on the Web are the same as the ones displayed in the PN - first  and second.

c. The "problem" area is the “panhandle” stretching NW from the La Rocina visitor centre. The UNESCO map doesn’t include it, but the Maps of the PN do! Furthermore, all descriptions of the current area of the PN describe its “Superficie total” (which presumably includes the “panhandle”) as being 54.252 ha i.e the same as the “extended” WHS!!! E.g from the same web site as the first …

As reported elsewhere, this is a difficult site to access. I reached the entry point at La Rocina by bus from Seville via the sand dunes of Matalascanes. From this entry I follwed the boardwalks to hides along the Madre de las Marismas.

I returned from El Rocio to Seville via Almonte, but another time I would avoid the summer weekends when the buses are full of people going to the beach.

We visited on a boat trip from Sanluca de Barameda, (I think this now means that all the main routes into the park are covered in reviews here) it was an enjoyable trip that gave a good over view of the importance of the park. It landed once in the National Park (WHS) for an hour tour and it landed once in the Natural Park (WHS buffer zone) for a spot of bird watching.

Like I said I enjoyed the day out but I could only really guess at the importance of the site. From the various hides in the national park we only managed to see one horse and a deer from a great distance. I guess that this is what is normal for visiting wildlife destinations, being brought up on David Attenborough documentaries you sometimes get spoilt and assume you will see the main attractions every time. In the natural park we managed to see quite a variety of birds: Herons, Spoonbills and Flamingos. This was nice although ornithology would not be one of my big passions so I perhaps didn’t get the most out of it.

The boat trip lasted about 3.5 hours and cost €17 (2008), it runs from the Donana Visitors centre in Sanluca which has some interesting exhibits on the park as well as some on the local sea faring traditions, Columbus and Magellan both set sail from here. Sanluca is also famous for its seafood and Manzanilla wine, though the town itself was …

Access to Doñana is very restricted: there are a couple of visitor centres at the park’s edges, otherwise, you have to join a guided tour. I started my visit at the primary Visitors Centre, in Acebuche. I quickly found out that I would miss out on the guided tours that are conducted daily from here: between Easter and September, you have to pre-book a tour well in advance. So I went for a long walk instead, following the wood-paved trails that guide you along the best places for birdwatching. I did see a lot of birds that are common in Holland (also on the same flyway) – waterfowl for example. I heard more twittering than I saw species, but that probably is the curse of birding.

I stayed overnight in the funky little town of El Rocio, which could easily try for its own place on the World Heritage List. In El Rocio, a yearly pilgrimage takes place in the week before Pentecost. The town is full of houses of the Brotherhoods coming from all over Spain. Sand covers its streets, which has the fortunate side effect that it slows down the cars. In the evenings, locals go for a ride on their horses. This is real cowboy country, more so than the American Southwest which it resembles. More authentic than Santa Fe, and with an even more ‘oasis in the desert’ pilgrimage church than San Xavier del Bac (near Phoenix, Arizona).

The next morning I went to …

In our travel around Spain we have been to the National Park of Doñana, situated on the right bank of the river Guadalquivir at its estuary in the Atlantic Ocean, important above all for its population of birds, with 5 endangered species. It is also one of the largest heronries in the Mediterranean region and the most important wintering site in Spain for waterfowl.

The first thing to say is that if you want to enjoy fully your visit to the park, you have to book one of the guided tours, starting generally from the Visitor Centre of Acebuche (the most important of the five), with which organized companies bring you with a bus to explore the inner parts of the park and to watch birds. There is one tour of the northern part of the park and one of the southern; there is also a boat trip on the Guadalquivir from Sanlúcar de Barrameda that shows you the right bank of the river, included in the park, staying outside of it. But we couldn’t do that because we didn’t know before our travel in Spain in which date we could arrive to the national park, because our itinerary wasn’t based on precise time planning.

If you want to visit places similar to those included in the National Park, you might visit the Natural Park (it surrounds the National Park in 4 sections and acts as a kind of Buffer Zone) that has 2 Visitor Centres and 7 Trails and …