Helen A. Jankoski

PUBLISHED IN: Fairfield Minuteman; For the Bride; New Haven Register; Snow Country; SnowLink website; Soundings; WindCheck: Westport Minuteman; Women's News (Westchester, N.Y.)

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Rancho Rio Caliente hot springs, healthful food and bargains abound at Guadalajara spa

by Helen A. Jankoski, Publication

From the toast-colored hills surrounding Rancho Rio Caliente, the hot-springs spa looks like an oasis. Ethereal-looking steam rises from a volcanically heated river and green is the dominant color.

Cooled to varying degrees, the hot river’s mineral-rich water fills four pools and a natural steam room. It is piped to bedrooms and used to keep the manicured lawns healthy.

It is March and my favorite view of the ranch is from the back of Colorado, a handsome bay horse. We delight in walking and cantering through Mexico’s Primavera Forest in the mornings, before the temperature climbs and time is preferably passed reading by the pool or enjoying a massage.

I’ve come to Rancho Rio Caliente 20 years – almost to the month – after reading a New York Times travel article about this affordable, vegetarian spa located 25 miles northwest of Guadalajara. “Someday” has finally arrived.

As spas go, Rancho Rio Caliente is a bargain. My seven-night “single” package costs $1,018, including meals, accommodations, pool exercises, yoga, meditation, hikes and evening programs plus one mud wrap, two massages and a shopping trip to Guadalajara. Doubles are priced at $844 per person. Add to that a 15-percent tax.

American Trans Air (ATA) had just started same-plane service from New York’s LaGuardia through Chicago-Midway Airport to Guadalajara, and offered a round-trip flight for just $434, the best fare I could find. Today, a similar ATA ticket is less than $400.

Life at Rancho Rio Caliente slides easily into a relaxed routine, casually revolving around the spa’s healthful meals.

Before breakfast: group meditation or a walk around the grounds. After breakfast: a horseback ride or a hike, then yoga. After lunch: the pool, a massage and pool exercise. After-dinner: a fascinating talk by a chiropractor from White Plains one evening, a showing of the subtitled, Spanish-language “Like Water for Chocolate” another. Programs vary from night to night, week to week.

Fifty rooms and cottages are spread between a patio area near the dining room and a slightly more pricey pool area, where I am. My airy riverside room has a cool terra-cotta tile floor, whitewashed block walls hung with native yarn paintings, double and single beds dressed in line-dried linens, a desk, and two leather-and-rattan chairs. Adjoining are a private bath and plenty of storage space. No phone, no TV, no radio.

A fireplace carved into a wall of each room allows guests to enjoy the Rio Caliente experience of a cozy, before-bed -- and sometimes early-morning -- pinewood fire that throws just enough heat to take the chill off. Stacks of wood and a gimbaled jug of drinking water are outside the door, which is framed by vibrant-pink bougainvillea.

The spa is at an elevation of nearly a mile and I huff and puff - to the accompaniment of peepers - on my first uphill trek to the dining room, past the horse corrals and neatly tended organic garden. Dinner is the lightest of the delicious buffet-style meals, consisting mainly of homemade soup and bread, salad, and juices such as oatmeal, celery/beet, hibiscus and guava.

The guests – 80 percent women; 40 percent repeat visitors – come from all over the U.S. and beyond and are happy to show a newcomer the ropes.

By morning I’ve consulted my Spanish dictionary and am hungry for huevos escalfados, which the kitchen staff already know as poached eggs. Eggs any style, homemade granola and yogurt are always available.

Lunch features dishes such as chiles rellenos (even some Texans said were the best they’d ever eaten), enchiladas, and casseroles. Another staple is fresh fruit, some of which goes onto the birdfeeders outside the dining room windows where it attracts colorful pajaros, like the Russet Crowned Mot Mot, Vermillion Fly Catcher and orange-legged Long Tailed Manakin. Two Audubon birders reported spotting more than 100 species in the area in a week.

Before Englishwoman Caroline Durston bought it 25 years ago, a British osteopath who touted papaya therapy and fasting ran the spa. Always though, guests have come to “take the waters” – a beneficial and odorless combination of salts and minerals, including mood-enhancing lithium, that flows from the 157-degrees F. river.

The main pools are usually 95 to 97 degrees. There’s no chlorination and the water is changed and pools scrubbed weekly. Stargazing from the warm water is amazing.

In the adjacent treatment rooms, I indulge in a daily massage, priced at only $48 to $56 for an hour. Raul, who’s been at the rancho for 38 years, has a firm hand, while Viviana gently applies clay heated with lavender and other aromatherapy herbs in her soothing, detoxifying “fangomassage.” It’s followed by a visit to the cavernous, subterranean rock- and tile-walled natural steam room infused with the scent of eucalyptus and sage branches. Afterward, I skinny-dip in one of the two (women’s and men’s) private enclosed 107-degree pools.

One afternoon I stand naked before a Mexican woman who coats me in mud and sends me out to bake in the sun for 15 minutes on a plastic chaise longue in a fenced-in yard. By week’s end I’ve been massaged from head (scalp massage) to toe (foot reflexology).

Although I went home 5 pounds lighter, the emphasis here is not on weight-loss, but on fresh food, energy-building exercise and simple resting. Healthwise, the spa’s philosophy centers on homeopathy, anti-aging and preventative medicine.

Exploring the surrounding hilly countryside by foot or horseback (only $28 for two hours in a group of four or more) is wonderful, among the Montezuma pines and Net Leaf oaks. The horses brush through aromatic stands of sage and on foot we find lots of volcanic glass – shiny black obsidian – said to offer protection and dispel negativity.

One morning a dozen of us set out on a challenging hike in the cool shade of a dry riverbed, clambering over boulders until we reach a box-canyon-like dead end.

Not wanting to give up a day in this paradise, I pass on the Guadalajara shopping trip that was part of my package and make my souvenir purchases in the spa’s courtyard, where authentic Huchiole Indians gather almost every day to sell clothing, silver jewelry and beaded items. Particularly attractive are the bowls they make out of dried gourds, covering them in traditional designs with tiny colorful beads, hand-set in beeswax.

Another popular souvenir is the spa’s spiralbound cookbook, “The Whole Enchilada.” Many visitors do take a day to visit Lake Chapala, Tequila, Tlaquepaque or Tonala on van trips offered by the spa.

Jane, a new friend from Los Angeles, and I are walking toward our rooms one day after a visit to a nearby rustic convent and sanitarium where, for a small donation, Madre Juanita, in a long white garment covered by a plaid smock, has read our irises to gauge the toxicity of our bodies. The Franciscan nun sends us home with personalized collections of potions and herbs gathered from the surrounding hills.

“That was an experience!,” says Jane as we descend a stone path back at Rio Caliente. “Everything here is an experience,” chuckles a woman walking the other way.

Through September, Rancho Rio Caliente is offering packages at an average 19-percent discount. For information or reservations call (800) 200-2927 or e-mail RioCal@aol.com. The spa’s web site is www.riocaliente.com.

This time of year, the terrain turns tropical. Though it is considered the rainy season, for many, it is a favorite time of year. The spa does not accept credit cards and prefers American checks.