I used to avoid balnearios (public swimming pools) with a passion, but recently I was invited to join a team of University of Guadalajara geographers investigating all of the hot springs around the old Primavera Caldera. To my surprise, I discovered that some balnearios have more to offer than noisy boomboxes and screaming kids.
Last week we took a look at two hot springs near the town of San Isidro Mazatepec, which is located 25 kilometers southwest of Guadalajara and 32 kilometers northwest of Jocotepec, along the four-lane Circuito Metropolitano Sur.
Mazatepec lies north of the highway, but if you drive south only 545 meters, towards the little town of San Antonio, you´ll see a small sign announcing “Aguas termales.” Turn left and in a minute you’ll find yourself at Rio Escondido, a balneario which has several nice-looking pools with tepid water that comes from a 50-meter-deep well. The admission fee is only 40 pesos for adults and on a weekday you are likely to be swimming there all alone, whereas on a Sunday you’d be bumping elbows with 300 others.
The surprise at Rio Escondido came when the caretaker invited us to look at their bungalows, which are located nice and far from the balneario area.
We walked through a gateway into an elegant place called Luna Aqua Villas. Here we found 25 truly attractive villas grouped around a large, stylish swimming pool. The villas are modern, immaculately clean and fully furnished with a kitchenette, blender, microwave, large fridge, TV with Sky and the nicest-looking bathrooms I’ve seen in years. The place even has a bar and a jacuzzi and looks like a perfect spot to hold a meeting or a reunion. The small villas (for up to four people) rent for 1,850 pesos per night Monday to Thursday. As for boomboxes, the caretaker says the place is dead quiet on weekdays and even on weekends you can count on “silencio total” after 10 p.m.
I have only one caveat: Note that the Guadalajara-Manzanillo railway runs right behind the villas, with trains passing by all hours of the day and night. Fortunately, they do little or no tooting because there are no streets crossing the tracks. If you want to make reservations for Luna Aqua, call (33) 3616-7025.
Just 280 meters west of Rio Escondido lies Balneario San Antonio. It looks a little seedy but has quite a history, connected with that selfsame railroad track running to Manzanillo. Don Jose, a member of the ejido which now owns this balneario, told us those rails run conveniently close to Mazatepec only because Mexican president Porfirio Diaz happened to have good friends living there. According to Don Jose, Diaz also enjoyed swimming in a small pila (natural pool) at the far end of this very balneario, where hot water still bubbles up through the rocks today as it did 115 years ago.
“El Presidente put a train station here,” Don Jose told us, “just so he could get off the train and bathe in this pool. He would swim in it alone and when he finished, his bodyguards were allowed to take a dip. When I was a child, I remember people coming here and paying 20 centavos just to see the place where Don Porfirio used to swim.”
The waters of Balneario San Antonio are said to have therapeutic properties. “People start arriving at 6 a.m. and they show up every day of the week,” said Don Jose. “One fellow came here from Tala in a wheelchair once. He couldn’t walk. They put him in that very same pool where the water bubbles up, massaged his body with aceite de lima (lime oil) and – de veras – that man walked out of here on his own two feet!”
This balneario has a toboggan and several pools to choose from, including, of course, Porfirio’s Presidential Pool. On Sundays, members of the local ejido serve up their best home-made dishes from special stands along what looks like an old-fashioned street, attracting quite a few people from Guadalajara as well as nearby towns. The entrance fee for the balneario is 40 pesos for adults, ten for children.
After swimming in one of these Mazatepec pools, you’ll probably work up an appetite and you may want to visit one of the many restaurants around Lake Valencia, only seven kilometers down the road. I recommend the fried fish at El Camello where you’ll also have a scenic view of the lake.
Afterwards, you might drive into the town of Mazatepec and stroll around their very beautiful plaza.
How to get there
From Guadalajara’s Periferico, take Highway 54 (Colima) southwest 15.6 kilometers and get off at the Tala-Tlajomulco Circuito Metropolitano Sur. You can also reach this point easily from Ajijic. From here go west 13.6 kilometers until you come to the Mazatepec sign. You’ll see a big cemetery on your right and a pedestrian bridge overhead. Turn left (southwest) immediately after the bridge and follow the unusually wide cobblestone road 545 meters. Here (N20.51205 W103.61292) turn left for Balneario Rio Escondido and Luna Aqua Villas. The turn for Balneario San Antonio is 280 meters further along the cobblestone road, at N20.51246 W103.61556. El Camello restaurant is seven kilometers further southwest, at N20.47088 W103.64975. To reach the plaza of San Isidro Mazatepec, follow the main road north into town for 690 meters (N20.52303 W103.61168). Driving time from Guadalajara or the lake is less than an hour.