Fuentes Georginas = Amazing Hot Springs

---

For my birthday we took a trip to Fuentes Georginas, which in Spanish loosely translates into "one of the greatest places to visit on earth." Fuentes is a natural hot springs heated by the underground activity of a dormant volcano. Someone fixed the place up with series of hot pools, a snack bar, and a number of cabins you can rent by the day if you plan to stay overnight.

We left on the afternoon of Friday, the 5th by chicken bus taking a 20 minute ride to Zunil (as a side note, if you want to experience the feel of a chicken bus, find a small car like a Honda Civic and cram yourself and 15 of your best friends into it. Then drive as fast as you feel like down a residential street, making it a point to pass other cars, but only on blind curves. Oh yeah, and blast Shakira or a mix of 80's favorites like Billy Jean by Michael Jackson on your radio. That should give you a rough idea of what we mean by a chicken bus ride :D). The real adventure, though, is the next leg of the journey.

Once you get to Zunil you meet a stream of local drivers ready and waiting to take you the next thirty minutes up the side of a mountain in the back of their pickup. YEAH! All the pickups in Zunil come properly outfitted with a cage that makes it possible to stand up a whole load of people in the back. It is kind of like WWE wrestling matches where it is last man standing and they put a couple huge guys inside a cage and say "GO!". The difference is that instead of wearing a speedo and being slicked down with oil, you are bundled up to keep warm, you are carrying your backpack and food for the night, the wrestling ring is the size of a nissan pickup bed, and you are travelling at 30-35 miles an hour up switchbacks on a wet and sometimes muddy road. It is a good mix of adrenaline and sheer terror because the drivers have driven the road a hundred times, so they could drive it with their eyes closed (I think ours might have). Did I mention that there are no guard rails and that sometimes the dropoffs are more than a quarter mile? Oh yeah, and there are cows grazing right by the road and sometimes in the road. HAH!

The trip was worth it! Our group of five was the only group there that night, so we had the whole place to ourselves. We let the warm waters melt away all of our potential nightmares from the ride up the mountain. We enjoyed some great food on the grill, including hot dogs (which our friends from England properly call sausages), hamburgers, and a surprise birthday cake! It was a great trip. The photos cannot do justice to the beauty of the place, but we hope you enjoy them all the same.

---

Photos

Foggy Mountain
Fuentes Georginas is located in a cloud forest, which means that it's high enough up that it's in the clouds most of the time. That makes it pretty chilly, but also makes for amazing views and a fantastic sit in the hot springs.

The Scary Skinny Road
Imagine this at 40 MPH in the back of a pick-up, with blind curves...and fog.

Pick-up Ride
Hold on for your lives!

Foliage Above the Pool
This is what you see when you look straight up from the main pool.

Comments

[slecker]

mmmm.....nah
That doesn't look incredible or amazing or fabulous at all. you know what is though? White trash neighbors who have littered their yard with blow up Halloween ornaments and a witch that sits in their porch and cackles all night. Much better!

[steph]

...
BEAUTIFUL! The pickup ride sounds....fun!