The Best Stop on the Route That Nobody Talks About Enough.
When travelers talk about the Inca Jungle route after returning to Cusco, the conversation is usually about the bike descent and Machu Picchu. These are the bookend experiences, the ones with the most obvious narrative weight, and they deserve the attention they receive. But somewhere in the middle of the conversation, if the traveler is being thorough, Santa Teresa comes up. And when it does, the tone changes slightly. It becomes less about exhilaration and more about something quieter and more lasting.
Santa Teresa is a small town in the valley of the river of the same name, sitting at approximately 1,600 meters in the cloud forest environment between the Andes and the Amazon. It is not a tourist destination in the conventional sense. It has a market, a few restaurants, some basic accommodation, and a surrounding landscape of coffee plantations, fruit orchards, and cloud forest that is beautiful in the specific, unhurried way that places are beautiful when nobody has organized them to be.
The Cocalmayo Hot Springs are a short distance from the town on the banks of the Santa Teresa River. They are the reason most Inca Jungle travelers know the name Santa Teresa at all, and they deserve an article of their own.
THE SPRINGS
Cocalmayo is fed by geothermal activity beneath the Andean range, water that has been heated by the earth and emerges at the surface at temperatures between 35 and 42 degrees Celsius. The pools are arranged on the riverbank in a series of terraces, with the warmest water at the top and progressively cooler pools descending toward the river itself. The sound of the Santa Teresa River runs through the entire experience.
The pools are surrounded by cloud forest. There are trees. There are birds. In the late afternoon when the light drops through the canopy at low angles the setting has a quality that is genuinely difficult to render in a photograph and genuinely easy to experience when you are sitting in warm water watching it happen.
Most Inca Jungle groups arrive at Cocalmayo in the mid to late afternoon after the rafting section of Day 2, which means that the majority of travelers entering the pools have already ridden 65 kilometers of mountain road and spent two hours paddling a Class III river. The water’s effect on legs and shoulders that have been working for two days is felt within minutes of immersion and tends to produce a particular quality of silence in the group that communicates more than conversation would.
PRACTICAL INFORMATION FOR YOUR VISIT
Bring your bathing suit in your daypack, not your main bag. This is the most common and most avoidable mistake on Day 2 of the Inca Jungle route.
The entrance fee is 10 soles per person, paid at the gate and not included in the tour price. Bring cash.
A towel from your main bag is more comfortable than the small towels provided at accommodation. Ask the driver to bring your main bag to the springs if you want access to it before the accommodation stop.
Give yourself a minimum of 90 minutes at the pools. The first 30 minutes are adjustment. The second 30 minutes are where the benefit happens. The final 30 minutes are where most people decide they would like to stay significantly longer than planned.
Hydrate while you are in the water. Thermal pools at altitude in warm afternoon air create conditions where the body loses water quickly and quietly. Bring your water bottle to the pool edge.
SANTA TERESA TOWN
After the springs, the group transfers to Santa Teresa for the overnight accommodation. The town is small, friendly, and largely oriented around the agricultural activity of the surrounding valley rather than tourism. Dinner at the accommodation is included on this night, which removes the logistical question of navigating a town you have never been to after dark after two demanding days on the route.
For travelers who want to explore the town in the time between the springs and dinner, the local market and the central plaza are both within easy walking distance of the accommodation. The fruit available in the market, harvested from the surrounding plantations, is exceptional and worth seeking out. Avocados, mangoes, and passion fruit grown at this altitude have a quality that their exported equivalents cannot replicate.
