Wildlife spotting in Nationaal park Monfragüe

a month ago · 4 min read · Torrejón el Rubio

During my road trip trough Spain I didn't plan much of the trip. I just looked at it day by day. Sometimes that means you miss stuff and other times it means you discover awesome things.

Just like this day. I saw a sign on route of a national park and I decided to go for it. It was just 11 km from the highway so it was not a big detour.

Nationaal park Monfragüe

After I drove a couple of minutes up hill I saw a sign that there was a viewing point up ahead. That is always good places for a stop. It was a narrow strip of sand next to a canyon with a sign that pointed out the wildlife that we could find there.

I saw vultures. That was so cool to see them.
At fist I saw one on the rocks on the right. Can you see him?

The next one I saw was on the left of the black hole in the rocks. And then, that was very hard, I saw something move in side the little cave in the rocks. A juvenile vulture. How cool is tat.

After a while they got a visitor, it must have been a family member because they let it very close to the nest.

After a while there came another car from the other side. I pointed them out the birdies and they loved it. And then they spotted something moving in the bush. A family of wild boars.

It was very difficult to spot them and even more difficult to capture them on camera. Even with 400 mm of lenses in front of my camera.

Here are two cropped version of the boar pictures.

that was pretty cool. Did't you spot them on the first pictures?

I asked the couple what was ahead of me and they told me there was a visitors center and a restaurant but they didn't like that. They advised me to go further down and stay by the reservoir. They talked about a hiking trail they took that runs along the water. They liked that but that's all that they did there.

So that's what I did.

the reservoir

When I arrived there I took some panorama pictures but the place didn't look very attractive to me. There were many camper vans and even two busses full of tourists came down the mountain and stopped next to me.

I quickly looked at google maps to see if there was another parking or viewpoint around there. I wanted to have lunch on a quiet spot. Google told me that a three minutes ride from there a parking and view point was located.

And what I saw there really surprised me>

vultures

The first thing that I saw when I got around the corner was a sky full of vultures.
I was extremely surprised and super happy at the same time, and secretly a little disappointed because it was extremely busy there. Luckily there was still one parking spot available and I could park my van well.

When I got out of the van, vultures flew over my head not even a couple of meters high. The sound was like a glider trough the wind whoessshhhhhh. That wa so cool.