It is still early afternoon, therefore we pass the public hotspring to visit Las Olletas first. This place is a vulcanic area a little bit further, where you find a few hot runlets that made the soil very colourful. It’s ok to go there, since it’s not very far off the main track anyway, but not a must do.
Finally it was time to visit the public hot spring. We are both big fans of hot springs and we have been visiting many of them on our trip so far. Most of the public ones are often expensive and you sit in hot water with many other people, while the enviroment is not that nice. So we aren’t expecting very much, when we pass the entrance gate.
Surprisingly it is totally different. We park our bikes at a little parking lot right next to a little resort with some barbecues. There is only one more car and the resort is completely empty. Even more surprising – the entrance is free and we just have to register! Unreal, the hotspring must be totally shitty.
We can’t see the bathing area, because you have to follow some signs and walk a few hundred meters behind a little hill. So we jump in our bathing rags and follow the path.
First we were absolutely speechless. This is the best hot spring we have ever seen in our life. It is almost natural and basically a few cascades with pools surrounded by mountains. The water temperature must be at around 45°C (115°F). There are no other people and you also don’t see the little resort, where we parked the bikes. We stay until it is almost dark and we have to look for a proper camp spot to spend the night.
After we have pitched our tent at a beautiful spot, we have a closer look on the map. It seems like we could follow this road all the way through the back country to Barrancas on the Ruta 40. The only problem is, we don’t have enough fuel for another 200km. So we decide that it is worth to ride back to Andacollo and fill our tanks the next morning.
However we want to visit Los Tachos geysirs first, before we start to ride. Sombody told us, that you can have a warm bath there, too. So we grab our bathing gear and follow a little trail into a gorge. After approximately 15min we reach the geysirs and it exceeds all our expectations again. The gorge is already beautiful. Beside the stream is green vegetation and there are two geysirs coming out off the ground. They are not very big, but are not fenced and everything is kept naturally, except of a little wooden bridge to cross the river. The cool thing is – you can sit into the hot river right next to the geysirs. You have to watch out the boiling water, of course. This is the second place, where it is a miracle, that we are totally on our own. Usually you have to share places like that with hundreds of other people.