WITH its flowing red rivers and rocky landscape, this attraction has been described as looking ”more like Mars than Earth’.
The open-air mining park is in the Huelva region of southern Spain and visitors can take a tour onboard a vintage train.
The Rio Tinto Mining Park has over 5,000 years of history and is renowned for having a unique red landscape.
Formerly used for mining, the site is now considered an open-air museum and first opened to the public in 1992.
Through the site runs the Rio Tinto river which is toxic – it’s highly acidic which is why the water has red and orange hues.
Thanks to this, the attraction has earned itself a comparison to the planet Mars.
It’s appeared in movies like The Heart of Earth, which tells the story of miners working at Rio Tinto in 1888.
The area has also been used by the likes of NASA for space testing as it has an ‘extreme environment’ just like that found on Mars.
One visitor wrote on Tripadvisor that is look “more like Mars than Earth” with another calling it “truly breathtaking.”
Dotted around the site are viewpoints, underground walks to view excavated spaces and there’s a chance to explore its museum too.
Another way to tour the mines is onboard a refurbished mine train.
The Rio Tinto railway itself was built in the late 1800s and once had 186 miles of track.
Now, the tourist railway ride covers just over seven miles of that on its restored railway line inside vintage diesel trains.
From the windows, visitors can look out over the bright red river and rocks.
The train journey is up to two hours long and there’s a chance of a pit stop in the middle before it loops back around.
The park is open daily with day tours that can be up to six hours long.
On Saturdays, there’s a chance to do the ‘Mars on Earth‘ circuit which starts at the Mining Railway Station and heads through the Red Planet-like scenery.
If you want to visit Rio Tinto Mining Park the closest airport is in Seville which is around an hour a half away by car.