Soak in a hot water river!

This is such a quiet spot during the week, but I'm sure it gets quite busy on the weekends because it is so close to the big city of Guadalajara. In fact, we are only 25 kms (15 miles) from the center of the city.

Yesterday, we walked to the hot springs river. In fact, the river is named Rio Caliente (Hot River). And it was hot, temperatures vary between 35 to 40 C (95 to 104 F)!

It was about a 4 km (2.8 mile) walk one way. There is a booth at the parking area where the guy collects 30 pesos ($2.10 CAD, $1.50 USD) per person.

Not much to see along the way, but we did get a good view of the Tequila Volcano.

They have built these beautiful pools into the river.

Didn't take us long to get in for a soak!

And the water is pretty hot. Not so hot that it's difficult to get in to, but that just tells you how hot it must be at the source 2 kms up river.

View from where we were sat in the water.

We just got in with our clothes on. There is zero humidity, so you dry off really quickly.

I enjoy a soak for fifteen or twenty minutes, but by the time my fingers start to wrinkle, I'm done! We got dried off and went to see how far we could walk up river.

This was as far as we got without having to take our shoes off, so we went back the other way.

The parking lot is quite big, so it obviously gets quite busy at times.

But not many people around on a Tuesday at noon.

There were a few though.

Looking down river.

There was a trail following the river, so we walked for a while until we saw a shady spot on the on the opposite side where we could sit and eat a snack so we hopped across some rocks to get to it.

Our view from where we sat.

Ruth found another trail behind us which led to a smaller stream... with even hotter water!

I went to have a closer look.

You can even see some steam coming from the waterfall on the right.

Amazing how stuff can grow in water this hot.

I decided to go do some exploring.

Steam coming off the water.

It was so hot that you could not comfortable stick your hand in the water.

Looking back at Ruth.

I hiked up the stream for a hundred meters or so.

A small cave.

And then we walked back to Igor. 

We had read that there are wild dogs in the park, and we have heard quite a bit of barking, but quite far off in the distance. And we were a little concerned because we had an experience with packs of dogs in Morocco once that was a little unsettling. 

So we're sitting inside Igor later in the afternoon, and I went outside to check something and came around the corner to find these two... I jumped at first because I wasn't expecting them, but soon realized they were harmless. In fact, I went and got a bowl of water for them, which they quickly gulped.

Cooling off in the shade of Igor.

They are still out there while I write this this morning.

It's a nice spot, but we have to head out today. We're going to make our way around the west side of Guadalajara, then north on a secondary road to a presa (dam) lake where there is supposed to be a good overnight spot.

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