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- Day 369
- Tuesday, November 5, 2019 at 2:00 PM
- ⛅ 24 °C
- Altitude: 1,741 m
MexicoRío Hormiga Colorada16°52’0” N 96°16’32” W
Hierve De Agua

Day 369.
As the celebrations were beginning to wind down we decided it was time to escape the city and head up into the surrounding mountains for some piece and quiet as well as a little adventure.
We had heard about Hirve De agua before arriving in Mexico, thanks to limbsters exhausting research there wasn't much we didn't know. But this one we thought was at least a tad of the beaten path. This dream was crushed fairly quickly once we started to notice to day trip fliers littered all over Oaxaca. Not to be defeated however we decided we would avoid those pesky tourists somehow.
The answer it turned out was to stay the night, so that was the plan. An hour by plus plus a further hour hanging rather precariously off the back of a pick up truck and we were there! It could have been slightly slower but every couple for themself is our new motto, so we showed no mercy clambereing into those last few spaces.
The setting was incredible, nothing in sight but rolling green hills, two large natural waterpools lay atop a petrified waterfall form a picturesque infinity pool over the mountains. Before heading in for a swim we had work to do to find somewhere to sleep, it was a fairly baron village so it would be a door to door process!
This started at the entrance itself, where 4 rather uncharming and definitely drunk hombres tried to take us for a ride. Not having any of it we swiftly moved on. The spanish is starting to come in more and more useful, not a word of English is understood here and therefore asking for help and taking directions is all the more necessary.
After a short walk we were in luck, a lovely lady who it seemed operated an open street kitchen, a Tienda and a small garden farm also happened to have two spare guest rooms available! Success. This meant we could be up bright and early the next day, long before the tour groups from the city arrived - we couldn't have been happier that our determination had paid off.
Not wanting to miss out on today's sun we headed to the pools for a celebratory swim, more smug now than ever as we walked back past the still intoxicated men. The pools and scenery was more beautiful than the photos and it was exactly the escape we needed from the city. For a first Limbster was straight in, I barely counted 20 seconds of hesitation, a real improvement. Lying together on the edge of the pools looking straight down on the mountains together below was amazing if not slightly unsafe..
Come sunrise the next day we scrambled down to the pools at 6.30am, it turns out we werent quite the only ones there but we could like with 3 or 4 other like minded backpackers and made a new freind in the process.
This was somewhere we could have stayed a lot longer but it was time to head back and get prepared for some trekking..Read more