Saturday, September 16, 2006

Sixty feet under

Fucking hell I had forgotten how much I hate rain. It's been raining for days but I mostly managed to stay out of it. In Cangas de OnĂ­s it thunderstormed, which was at least interesting. This morning there was a rainbow. I'm trying to be positive. But then my feet got soaked and my umbrella inverted and that sucks so fucking bad. Grrr.

Anyway. There are these caves with prehistoric paintings outside of Santander. Seemed like a good thing to do on a rainy day, since caves have rooves. But the caves are 1.5k from the bus stop, uphill, in the rain. Stop whining.

The cave (there are allegedly four, but you could only visit one) was very impressive. They let you go about 20m down and it's all dark and spooky and puddle-y and full of stalacmites and stalactites. And the oldest of the paintings is thirty thousand years old. Wow. Painting is kind of a strong word; it's an outline made by blowing crushed oxidated iron against a hand placed flat on the wall. So the ancients found a use for rust. You know the turkeys that kids draw by outlining their hands? It looked like that, but with no beak. The "newer" ones (only fifteen thousand years old) were actually paintings, of horses and deer and bison, and better than anything I could paint. Excavation of the cave started in the early 1900's and was originally funded by the prince of Monaco.

Thirty thousand years; that kinda makes my head spin. I'm not sure how they date things made of iron, and my Spanish skills don't really support that kind of conversation. Maybe the rust had some carbon in it, I dunno.

I meant to wear sneakers to the cave, but then I forgot and showed up in my flip-flops, which are on their very last legs and have no traction. Not exactly caveworthy, and there was even a warning at the entrance about wearing appropriate shoes. So I was a little worried. But fear not, this is Spain, where even my most ridiculous shoes are borderline practical. The flip-flops were fine.

1 Comments:

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