Take me back to the hot springs in Tolantongo!

Another fun-filled weekend! On Friday I had brunch with Adris at Lusso in downtown Toluca. It’s possibly the cutest café in the world. Everything looks and tastes delicious. I had pancakes and they came with a guava sauce that was divine. In the afternoon I visited Bruno at the hospital because he had his gall bladder removed. I feel so bad for him. I stayed with him for a couple hours then went to a friend’s house for a get-together. I was told there would be tacos so obviously I had to go. They hired people from a taquería to make tacos in the backyard with their equipment. I had never seen that before but I guess it’s common here. Best idea ever.

After a good 1.5 hours of sleep I headed over to the bus station with the lovely Faby, Jasmin, and Andy on Saturday morning to start our adventure to Tolantongo! We took a bus to Mexico City to meet up with Ellis then another bus to the state of Hidalgo then a taxi to Tolantongo. Tolantongo is a box canyon made up of rivers, caves, grottos, and waterfalls all with naturally hot water in a resort. It’s a natural hot springs paradise basically! The resort is made up of 3 hotel complexes. When we got there, we tried to find a hotel room but they were all booked because tour companies bring buses of people at a time. We decided not to think about it at the moment and we enjoyed the natural beauties of Tolantongo.

First the girls bought water shoes. I had flip flops so I opted out. The first “attraction” we went to was a long and narrow tunnel/cave. You started by walking in the tunnel with water up to your ankles but by the end you were swimming and holding onto a rope to guide you. The second place we went to was a big, water-filled cave. It had another one of the tunnels insidevbut with a much stronger current. I lost a flip flop. Thankfully Jasmin rescued it for me! I should have bought water shoes. After we stayed in the cave for a while, we thought it might be a good idea to figure out where we were going to sleep for the night. There is camping all around the resort area so we ended up renting a tent and a blanket because that was the only option. We got help setting the tent up and right next to the tent there were big man-made pools with warm water. I think we spent about 3 hours just relaxing in the water, talking, and learning to swim. Not only am I an English teacher, but I was also a swim instructor for the day. We stayed in the pools until we got kicked out around 10:30PM. We went to bed early because no one had slept the night before.

Make that TWO nights that no one slept. We were so cold in the tent because we didn’t rent any kind of cover. Faby put all of her clothes on top of herself to stay warm during the night. We woke up bright and early before 8 and explored a waterfall. It was beautiful! We only went to take pictures because the water wasn’t as warm as other parts. Then we found some other pools and stayed in those for a couple hours before the breakfast hunt. It was more like a brunch hunt by the time we could pull ourselves out of the water because it was so heavenly. The food the whole weekend was great! Most of us had chilaquiles for breakfast. After the meal, we visited the river and got ready to hit the road. Right before we were about to leave it started pouring. Thankfully we were all packed and ready to go. We took a bus to Ixmiquilpan about an hour away and ate because we were going to be traveling for the rest of the day. We took a 3-hour bus to Mexico City then got on the metro to go to another bus stop in Mexico City before getting a bus back to Toluca. Lots of buses, taxis, and trains but Tolantongo was beautiful and totally worth it!