Although Nerja’s top attraction, Las Cuevas, has had a bad year, it has just reopened with new facilities for visitors to enjoy.

Yes, even though the Cuevas de Nerja have been open to the public for 60 years, 2020 will go down as its worse year

The only other time that the caves were closed was when they were occupied by protestors in 1996; tenant farmers on land (Vega de Tetuán) belonging to Larios in Maro. Yet this cannot compare with the extended period during which the caves had to close this year: between March the 14th and the 1st of June.

This year, the caves registered half of the total recorded visitors during 2019, which were some 410,000 tickets. Who knows what 2021 will bring? Fingers crossed with the vaccine!

The Chairman of the cave’s foundation, Teófilo Ruiz, together with the Mayor, José Alberto Armijo, as well as the surviving ‘boys’ who discovered the caves back in the 50s, attended a public event to promote the caves.

Thanks were expressed to the visitors who did manage to visit the caves during 2020, despite all the difficuties. Also thanks went to the team from the Instituto de Investigación de la Cueva de Nerja that maintains the installations and handles the conservation of the caves themselves.

The positive thing about the caves being closed for almost four months is that it gave the staff the chance to carry out improvements to the parking area, as well as realise work within the caves themselves. The work on the car park cost 247,000 euros, which entailed improving the entrance with a large arch and marking out more clearly the individual parking slots in the bus park and the car park. In fact, they have also added separate parking areas for electric vehicles and motorbikes.

Nerja Caves now also has a kiddy park divided into 13 areas with play-park equipment. It has its own toilets, as well.

The idea is that families can spend the whole day in the Installations and not only down in the caves themselves.

(News: Nerja, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia – Photo: E. Cabezas)