Santa Rosa de Cabal

The thermal baths at Santa Rosa de Cabal are what every guidebook means when it says “local secret” and then immediately tells a hundred thousand people about. They are not a secret. But they are also, on a weekday morning in January, something close to the real thing: concrete pools of different temperatures terraced into a narrow canyon, the water smelling slightly of sulfur and minerals in a way that is not unpleasant but that you notice, a waterfall at the back that drops into the uppermost pool with enough force to push you under if you stand too close, and along the access path, the grilled corn vendors and the lady with the empanadas and the man selling small plastic bags of aguardiente as if this were a convenience that anyone might require.

I rented a motorbike in Santa Rosa de Cabal proper — a pleasant mid-sized town with a good square and absolutely no reason to stay longer than it takes to eat a meal — and rode the eight or so kilometres up the canyon road to the baths. The road passes coffee farms on the lower slopes, then forest, then a section where the river runs fast over boulders and the road is barely wider than the bike. You smell the sulfur before you see the pools.

The pools are managed — there is an entrance fee, changing rooms, a small restaurant — but not so managed that they lose the feeling of having been discovered. The hottest pool is very hot, properly hot in the way that makes your face flush and your muscles surrender all at once. The cooler pools are still warm, the thermal gradient gentled by the mountain water mixing in from the stream. I spent three hours there on a Tuesday and was outnumbered by Colombian families from Pereira, all of whom seemed to have brought considerably more food than anyone could reasonably consume, which they offered to strangers with the particular Colombian generosity that is also, somehow, a form of insistence.

The nearby mushroom-shaped waterfall — the Termales San Vicente — is the more famous of the two hot spring sites in the area, with its famous hot waterfall that you can stand under. I did not go. I had already found my pool and my temperature and my corn vendor and I saw no reason to improve the situation.

The town of Santa Rosa de Cabal also produces some of Colombia’s best chorizo — the regional specialty called chorizo santarrosano — which you will find grilled at roadside stalls and served with arepas and ají. I ate one on the way back down the canyon, standing at a corrugated-iron stall, dripping hot fat onto my shoes, watching the afternoon rain begin to build against the ridgeline to the west. It was a very good chorizo.

When to go: The thermal baths are best on a weekday in the dry season — December to February or June to August — when the canyon crowds thin and the morning light hits the water without competition. Weekends and holidays bring families from Pereira and Manizales in numbers that make the pools feel more like a public swimming event. Both versions have their charm, but I strongly prefer the Tuesday version.