November 8, Tuesday Los Azufres

 

Tuesday, November 8  Los Azufres

Election day back in the States.  We all voted early and now are blissfully disconnected from that.

We have breakfast, load up the van.  That's a little more complicated than most days.  Dave and Patty bought a full length mirror from a street vendor.  Shipping it home turns out to be more complicated than initially thought.  We're taking it with us and will revisit the shipping issue when we get back to Morelia.  

Off to the unknown for all of us.  I made reservations for us at Los Azufres Spa so hopefully all is well.  It looks good on Booking.com.  It's about a 3 hour drive and the scenery is nice.  When we get close, we can see puffs of steam in the distance from the geothermal plants.

We come to a really pretty little lake, looks like a nice hotel area.  Oh, but GPS says we're not to our place yet.  We continue on past the pretty lake.  GPS says we've arrived but there is a chain link fence gate, a gravel parking area, a big earth mover carting around mud a couple small little buildings and a green pond.  This can't possibly be where I made reservations.  This is like those commercials of bad booking experiences.  Everyone gets out and walks down to the pond while I try to figure things out.  They are all pretty quiet and have concerned faces.  They find the reservation that I made but they aren't really ready for us.  Their records show that Booking hasn't charged my account.  They try to call Booking on the phone that is attached to a pole outside one of the little buildings.  I tell them that we won't be staying and that we won't be paying either.  I tell everyone that we're not staying and we're going back to that pretty little lake.  Everyone looks very relieved.  Luckily, it isn't the weekend or high season so I feel quite confident that there will be space for us back at the lake.  There is! And, it's about half the cost of the green mud pond place.  I wish I had taken a picture of it but I was too anxious to just get away from it to think about a picture.  

Where we landed certainly wasn't luxury but it sure looked good after the other place!  We got rooms with lake views, had a good lunch of fresh lake trout.  The restaurant closed at 3:30 so we ordered quesadillas to go to have for dinner.  The little store also closed at 3:30 so we got some snacks and drinks to have with dinner.  

Patty went in one of the thermal pools while the rest of us went on a walk to  explore the area.  We were hoping to walk around the lake but the path petered out.  Walk the other way around and see how far we can go.  Hmmm.  Not very far but it is pretty.  We a path up to what looks like some small water falls.  Off we go.  It takes us up to some more thermal pools.  And a merry-go-round.  Fun to see Wynne and Dean go back to being kids.  Each pool is a little warmer as you get towards the source.  People are all in the warmest one.  

We had a picnic dinner with our quesadillas in a nice picnic shelter.  Dave was able to open the beer without an opener on the side of the big grill.   They didn't give us all cheese quesadillas like we asked for, but instead all beef ones.  Bleah!  Still had enough food for the non-beef eaters.  The resident dog enjoyed some quesadillas when we were done.  

We decided to have a leisurely morning here rather than get up early in the morning to drive to the falls at Uruapan.  They're nice but not worth a long drive at the end of a trip.   

Good night.