Bats live in cavities, and so do eagles. The rocky country around Andragulla, in the municipality of Moratalla, is full of holes: overhangs, clefts, small caves that the survey of rock art calls cavidades, and each of them is a home for something. Bats roost in the dark ones, swifts and choughs nest in the cracks, and on the highest cliffs a golden eagle or a Bonelli's eagle may build a nest of sticks. The shelters with painted figures are only the human part of a much larger story of life in the rock.
The hills here are covered in Aleppo pine, with rosemary, thyme, juniper and the tough esparto grass in the open ground. In spring, orchids and rock roses appear, and the air smells of resin and herbs. Wild boar, foxes and rabbits live in the scrub, and in the evening you may hear owls. It is a landscape that has been used by people for a very long time but never overwhelmed by them, and the paintings fit within it.
Getting here is an easy ride from Moratalla, twelve kilometres away, by quiet roads with long bends and little traffic. The surface is generally good, with some rough patches. Caravaca de la Cruz, sixteen kilometres off, has fuel, shops and a famous castle sanctuary, and Socovos is a smaller place to the north. Moratalla itself has the sensible services, including fuel.
Come in spring or autumn. Summer is hot and dry, with the risk of forest fires, and winter nights are cold. Take water, a hat and good shoes, and treat the shelters with care. Never light a fire or leave rubbish.
The most useful thing you can bring is time. These hills do not reward a quick look, because the paintings are small, the rock is complicated and the wildlife keeps its own hours. Sit still for a quarter of an hour at the foot of a cliff and the place changes: a lizard emerges on a warm ledge, a pair of choughs wheel overhead, a faint trail on the slope turns out to belong to a family of boar. Moratalla's hills are a landscape that opens to patience, and a motorcycle, with its small footprint and its ability to be parked and forgotten, is a good way to arrive at it.