We were lounging on our beds, contemplating a sunset walk, when my phone rang. Marco, our tour guide for the next night’s visit to see prehistoric rock art, wondered where we were – had we got lost? Our tour was right now!
Somehow, some wires had got crossed when I’d booked our rock art tours through the Coa Valley Museum. I’d planned it for the next night, but Marco was unavailable then. He said he’d wait for us.
We hurriedly changed into hiking gear, gathered our stuff, jumped in the car, and raced to the meeting spot – a 25-minute drive down the valley, across the Coa River, and up the steep hills on the far side to Castelo Melhor, a town near the Penascosa rock art site. We found Marco, met an Italian couple that was also late (they’d got lost), and our wonderful tour began.
Indeed, I’d found that booking our three guided tours to see carvings at the world’s largest outdoor rock art site had been confusing. So, here are six tips, based on our experiences, for visiting this incredible UNESCO World Heritage site.
Tip #1: Book ahead
The prehistoric rock carvings are the pièce de resistance in the Coa Valley. Guides help visitors find the overlapping animals, such as this auroch at the Canada do Inferno site.
Although you can tour the Coa Valley Museum any time during opening hours, the real pièce de resistance are the rock art sites in the surrounding Coa Valley Archeological Park. And you can visit them only on guided tours.
If you follow just one of these tips, make it this one: book your tours to the rock art sites ahead, preferably before you arrive in the Coa Valley. Here’s why:
- The number of tours is limited.
- The number of people on each tour is also limited.
- If you just show up, all the tours for that day may well be booked, and you’ll be disappointed because you cannot go without a guide.
The official park guides – and even private guides – are all required to have specialized training in rock art. They add significantly to understanding, and even finding, the art. So going on a guided tour is definitely a highlight.
That being said, booking the tours can be mighty confusing. That’s what I found when I searched online for information about tours and trolled the Coa Valley Museum’s website. Some tours run only in the mornings, some only in the afternoons, some both, one at night (Penascosa), one by kayak or solar-powered boat (Fariseu). One site (Ribeira de Piscos) can’t be visited in the summer because it’s too hot for the one-kilometre hike. Tours depart from different locations. The Coa Valley Museum offers tours, but so do private companies.
My head spun. Trying to juggle all these factors almost made me give up. But I’m happy I persevered.
I booked our tours through the museum, since the tours seemed less expensive and I could deal with just the one entity. Don’t try to fill in the form on the website – just send an email with your preferred tours, language, dates, and times, plus backups.
Here’s what we did:
- Day 1: Drove to the Coa Valley (three hours from our adopted home town of Alcobaça). Afternoon visit to the Coa Valley Museum.
- Day 2: Morning visit to Canada do Inferno rock art site. Surprise night visit to Penascosa (I had booked it for the night of Day 3).
- Day 3: Morning boat trip to Fariseu.
- Day 4: Early morning hike on Coa Walkways. Drove home.
When I received the tour confirmations from the museum, I discovered that the museum sometimes sub-contracts to private guides. Both Luis Henriques (our guide to the Canada do Inferno site) and Marco Ferraz (our guide to the Penascosa site) also offer tours through their own companies.
If you’d prefer to book a private tour, I can fully recommend Luis and Marco – they were both excellent. Contact Luis via his family website or email at henriques.chaodordem@gmail.com. Marco runs AmbiEduca; contact him by email at ambieduca@gmail.com.
Tip #2: Visit the museum first
Museum displays include plenty of rock carving replicas, overlaid with coloured outlines to help visitors attune their eyes to the shapes and differing styles of carving.
Visit the Coa Valley Museum first, before your rock site tours, to wrap your head around what the valley and carvings are all about. The museum will help you figure out what you’re looking at later, out in the field, when you’re trying to untangle the overlapping carvings of aurochs, deer, goats and horses.
You’ll also learn the incredible story of the hydro-electric dam that nearly flooded the entire valley. Later, when you’re down at river level looking up to where the water surface might have been, you’ll have a better understanding of how these treasures might have been lost.
Tip #3: Be flexible
Visitors can take a solar-powered boat or kayaks to visit the Fariseu rock art site.
Portugal is no Germany or Switzerland. If there’s one thing we’ve learned during our 2.5 years living here, it’s to be flexible and patient. We’re more surprised when things happen on time, not when things go awry.
The night after our surprise tour with Marco, we showed up on time at the dock for our solar-powered boat tour to the Fariseu rock art site. We waited. Others arrived. We waited some more. We sat in the shade, admiring the river’s pretty green water – milky green like a bottle. And deliciously cool. I stuck my hands in. We watched kayaks bobbing near the dam. I idly wondered if we should have opted for the kayak tour to the Fariseu site.
“Whatever will be will be,” I wrote in my journal.
My tip: be prepared for timing and details to be fluid. And be patient. Things will happen in their own time.
The solar-powered boat finally appeared, gliding quietly towards us. We clambered aboard and set off to see more fascinating rock carvings.
Tip #4: Take the night tour
Guides help identify the various overlapping animals at the rock art sites by outlining them on the rock and showing diagrams.
Make time in your itinerary to take the night tour to Penascosa. That was definitely the highlight for us, because it’s surprisingly easier to see the carvings when lit by flashlight than during bright sunshine.
It’s also much cooler at night, especially if you’re going in the very hot summers that the Coa Valley experiences. We visited in August when the days were blistering hot (35 to 37 degrees Celsius, although it can get even hotter). During our night tour, we wore t-shirts; no jackets required.
Tip #5: Prepare yourself
Jouncing around in the back of a four-wheel-drive vehicle can be jarring for older bones.
Moderate fitness helps for visiting the rock art sites. We climbed into and out of the backs of four-wheel-drive vehicles and jounced along pretty rough roads.
None of the rock art sites we visited required long hikes, but the trails were rough in places. Wear sturdy shoes. Canada do Inferno had a steep descent (and return ascent) on rough rock steps. Penascosa and Fariseu trails were fairly flat, but both had short ascents to rocky outcrops.
Apart from fitness, prepare for your tours by taking water, sunscreen and a hat.
If you visit the Coa Valley in the summer, book accommodations with a swimming pool. We made generous use of the pools at our two hotels (Quinta do Chao D’Ordem and Eira da Fraga – both highly recommended) in the afternoons when we felt wilted by the heat. Spring and fall have more pleasant temperatures.
Tip #6: Stay longer
A sculpture at a central roundabout in the town of Vila Nova da Foz Coa has a stylized figure, arms outstretched to embrace the carvings, a connection between art and nature.
In one full day, you could visit the museum in the morning, see a rock art site in the afternoon, and take the night visit to Penascosa. But that’s a long day, and there’s so much more to enjoy.
Spending more time also lets you be more flexible if (when) things go wrong. (See Tip #3.)
We poked around the lovely little town of Vila Nova da Foz Coa in the cooler evenings, while scouting for restaurants. Around the central square, we saw the fancy carved pillory, admired the blue and white tiles in the entrance to the town hall, and wandered into the Igreja Matriz (parish church). Passing through its elaborately carved Manueline doorway, we craned our necks to admire the painted barrel-vault ceiling in the nave.
Prehistoric rock carving animals adorn a gas pump and the stone calçadas sidewalks in Vila Nova da Foz Coa.
The town seems to have enthusiastically embraced the prehistoric carvings, with animal outlines in the traditional stone calçadas lining the sidewalks, atop the lampposts and even on a gas pump.
Staying longer also leaves you time to hike the Coa Walkways (Passadiços do Coa), a combination of boardwalks and stairs that has 890 steps and a drop of 160 metres, starting behind the Coa Valley Museum. We thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful hike – but make sure you do it in the morning, when it’s cooler. We stopped many places (especially on the way back up!) to contemplate the T where the Coa River empties into the Douro River, as well as the beautiful terraces of grapevines, almond trees, and olive trees. Overhead, large birds circled, but we didn’t know enough to identify them. Info panels told us that Bonelli’s eagle and Golden eagles make this area home, as well as Egyptian and Griffon vultures, black storks and alpine swifts.
The winding road between the Museum and town is lined with schist walls that outline almond orchards and olive groves. (Please excuse the glare; I took this out the front window as we drove along.)
The Coa Valley happily overlaps with the upper Douro Valley wine region. About 20 wineries in the Foz Coa area are open to visitors, offering reds, whites and, of course, delectable port wines too. We dabbled a bit, but hadn’t left enough time for full exploration.
The longer you stay, the more restaurants and wine you can sample!
The Coa Valley Museum’s restaurant is quite good and served up terrific valley views along with its delicious regional dishes. We shared stuffed mushrooms, then each had veal steaks – mine with apples in port wine, Bill’s with wild mushrooms.
Foz Caffé offered excellent and quick service for a tasty lunch. But Aldeia Douro was our favourite restaurant. Bill enjoyed excellent pork tacos while I relished my chicken quesadillas. (No, those are not traditional Portuguese dishes but when you live here, sometimes you want some variety.) The local Quinta da Cuca red wine we had was excellent.
The Coa River empties into the upper Douro River, with vineyards terraced up the steep hillsides.
Here’s what we’d see on a return visit:
- The Almond Blossom Festival: held annually in February-March. The photos showing rolling hills covered in blossoming trees are spectacular. While we were there in mid-August, farmers were harvesting almonds, although that was early; usually the harvest is in September, said our guide Luis, who grows almonds on his farm. To harvest almonds, you use a machine to shake the trunk and the ripe nuts fall down.
- Quinta de Ervamoira: a winery located along the Coa River within the Coa Valley Archeological Park – the protected area surrounding the rock art. Along with wine and port tastings, the quinta has a small museum about viticulture, Roman and medieval archeological heritage, and the carvings. If the dam had gone ahead, the quinta would have been lost under water. Visits must be booked in advance, and I hadn’t done so. (See Tip #1.)
- A guided tour with Marco: he loves birding. We want to learn more about those eagles, vultures and black storks.
- The Ribeira da Piscos rock art site: that’s the site that’s closed in the summer when it’s too hot.
- Castelo Melhor: the castle and the town around it. We had planned to have dinner there before our night visit to Penascosa, but that plan went awry when our tour got moved up a day.
But those are just the highlights. We loved the Coa Valley and look forward to seeing more.
Bonus tip: Take time to contemplate time. The people who took time out of their busy days to carve those animals on the schist rock did so 30,000 to 12,000 years ago. Ponder that. Set against that time frame, our lives are barely drops in the bucket.
We visited the Coa Valley in August 2024. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.
