After our hike to the waterfall Velo de la Novia, we still had one more stop on our list before we would drive 6 hours back to Santa Cruz de la Sierra on the 830km day trip. - So we jumped back in the car and followed the street /train rails that were built to reach the Brazilian border.
It was impressive to see the trail racks that looked a bit old and unused in the middle of the nature path, the mountains on our side, and all the green around it. - I haven´t seen a landscape like that with a humid climate before. And watching it from the car, I was sad that we didn´t have more time to stay in this area and explore it even more for some days.
It had been a long day already and Britta and I took a short nap for the next hour. Not long after that we finally reached our last destination: The Centro Turistico Los Hervores in Aguas Calientes, Roboré.
As we had just booked a tour to "explore nature and see some flora and fauna close to the Brazilian Border" with no real background information about that the day before, we didn´t expect what was coming next.
We jumped out of the car and found ourselves in an area that looked like a big park at some river or lake. There were many seats and places to sit down and leave our stuff, and we could see different areas of the water.
One part of the water looked weirdly brown and the other was super clear. Everywhere the water was steaming. Super weird - and then I saw the sign and it made sense. It said: Aguas Termales (hot springs).
On the sign it said, that this is a huge paradisiacal natural area with a 5-kilometer stretch of its river. The layer of vapor seems to float which clearly indicates that these waters are, really, “hot”.
So we have landed on a real natural paradise of hot springs, one of the largest in the world here on our day trip in the tropical part of Bolivia. Who would have thought that!?! I only knew hot springs from Chile at 5000m over sea level. I had never seen them in humid areas.
Britta and I of course changed again putting our bikinis on to go inside and try it out and it was such a difference from the cold fresh water of the waterfall we had been to just a few hours ago.
We entered the river at the warmest side. Here the water was not very deep and totally brown. It was super warm and looked weird. So we walked around for a bit and sat down for a moment in the water.
The hot water was great for our sore muscles, but with this warm weather, it was weird to be in warm water as well. I got tired really fast as my circulation went down I guess. Here the water was around 40-45 degrees warm.
Apart from us, there were only local people around watching us "gringos" enjoying the warm waters. We walked towards them and decided to get in touch with them and started talking. Our driver didn´t give us much information and used that time to sleep in his car before he would drive back 6 hours with us. So it was great to get to know some other people and learn something about where we are 😅
They came here quite often as the thermal waters for the Indios here are known for good health. The water of the Hot springs of the Aguas Calientes River is born in the mountains and, according to the most accepted theory, at some point in their course, they descend to great depths, coming into contact with hot layers of the subsoil, that increase their temperature.
This stretch, of the Aguas Calientes River is divided into different recreation areas to enjoy its hot springs, which are very suitable for their for the treatment of diseases such as arthritis, rheumatism, and dermatological conditions.
The area is surrounded by lush vegetation and inhabited by toucans and herons. It is a highly protected area to avoid any type of ecological disaster. - Once we knew that we started looking to the sky and really saw some birds flying around! Finally... some animals..even though they were very far away 😅
We were currently in the area of Los Hervores. Its name comes from the gushes of hot water that emerge from the bottom and reach around 40 degrees Celsius. This area is not very deep and walking further we could see the holes where the hot water came up.
We slowly walked closer to them and could feel that the water was even warmer there - of course. It was a bit spooky to know that there were holes where the water came up. I felt a bit like being in a cooking pot and seeing this water that looked like it was boiling. We watched the locals and could see that they were sitting next to the wholes or some even were standing inside.
We slowly tried it out ourselves. I was a bit scared to just fall into that hole and never come up again, but I could stand in there. It was actually quite fun.
We played with it and after a few tries, we dared to go deeper and deeper into the holes.
And then when we had healed all our muscles (including arms and legs), we decided to check out the other part of the river. So walking further along the course of the river, we arrived at a place called El Playón. There we could see how the water level exceeded one and a half meters.
Going further to El Burriño and El Puente the temperature of the water, which is completely crystalline, is no longer so high. The water temperature dropped as we moved away from the Hervores area.
Here we learned that these two areas have camping areas, toilets, and showers for the Yororoba community, located 6 km from the entrance to Aguas Calientes, a community tourism project where you can enjoy a 2 km circuit consisting of a waterfall and several representations of cave paintings.
We were just about to change and explore that 2km circuit when our driver came back and told us that it was time to go home. We still had 6 hrs drive ahead of us, so he didn´t want to go too late. Of course, we could understand that and decided to pack our things and go back then.
I remember that the guide let us play our music in his car which was not state of the art back in the days and we enjoyed that very much while watching the scenery while the sun went down slowly.
Of course, we also wanted to help him stay awake after such a long day driving 830km total.. for us such a long drive in one day was just insane. That is like if you drive from Munich to Venice, check out the place for one day, and then drive back - so weird to do that in one day.. but of course, everything in Europe is much closer in comparison and that´s just how it is when you don´t have much time. So we played great music and I talked with him during the whole drive back to Santa Cruz de la Sierra and we arrived late at night. - It was a very long day packed with lots of cool adventures! - Feel free to check out the video about it ;)
The next morning we had to wake up early to drive to the airport and fly to Sucre. But more about that soon, so stay tuned 😉
Cheers,
Liz