Las Aguas

We’ve visited Agua Azul and Agua Caliente, both in Chiapas.

Agua Azul is a river, the Xanil, and a series of waterfalls where the water has an azure blue color.

If it hasn’t been raining upstream that is. Which it had been doing for a couple of days so the water had more of a green/grey color when we were there but it is still a beautiful area. The river originates from the surrounding mountains, which are covered in jungle forest. The highest waterfall is 6m and in between the waterfalls there are areas where you can swim. We walked up along the river and near one of the last waterfalls there was a little village. So we figured out how to get there by car and spent the afternoon parked at the water. We also noticed a more quiet spot a little upstream and spend 2 nights camping there. The first night we had company from a Swiss couple and we shared experiences and food. The 2nd day we swam in the river and talked to a lot of curious and friendly locals. The next day we left this beautiful area.

Agua Caliente means warm water. We hadn’t planned on visiting this as we had not heard from it. But we drove past it on our way to Union Juarez where we wanted to drive a beautiful road to a waterfall. When I say “drove past it” I really mean it was a 2 hour detour from the main road. But we didn’t know this when we decided to drive there. It came highly recommend by several locals and the road sign said it was only 12 km, so why not? It turned out that it was a difficult off road track which took us over an hour to drive. Finally we were in the small village also called Agua Caliente. From here it is a 20 minute walk down to the warm waters. I was really starting to wonder if it was worth all the time and effort. After all, we would also have to walk back up again and drive all the way back.

Turns out it was definitely well worth it! Beautiful, gorgeous! As if we were in some kind of romantic, tropical movie scene. Beautiful mountains, the walls covered in green plants, moss and flowers. Water trickling down. 2 high waterfalls with clear cold water. Green meadows with more flowers. And 3 hot water springs. One at the top of the trail near the biggest waterfall. The water was really warm. It got kind of windy though and the spray from the water was soaking our stuff and Binkie! So we moved down to the second source, away from the waterfall. This water was incredible hot! Luckily the 3 source had just the right temperature, so we enjoyed that one. We also had a swim in the river which was a bit cold 🙂 So basically it was all very healthy with all the hot and cold bathing. Even though it is quite a detour and you need a 4wd to get there, it was definitely worth it!