Aguas Calientes de Sajama

Aguas Calientes de Sajama is a high-altitude geothermal spring in Sajama municipality of Oruro Department, Bolivia, situated within or adjacent to Sajama National Park at the foot of Volcán Sajama, Bolivia's highest mountain reaching 6,542 meters above sea level, whose perfectly conical snow-capped summit dominates the altiplano skyline in one of the most dramatically beautiful high-mountain landscapes in the Andes. The spring waters emerge from the volcanic geology of this active geothermal zone at temperatures that provide warming relief from the bitter cold of the Bolivian altiplano, which sits above 4,200 meters elevation in a landscape of austere puna grassland, ancient queñua polylepis forests, and the adobe villages of Aymara communities who have herded llamas and alpacas across these windswept plains for centuries. Bathing in the siliceous hot spring waters here, with the glaciated summit of Sajama towering above and the vast altiplano stretching to every horizon, offers one of South America's most exhilarating and spiritually charged thermal experiences in one of the continent's most remote and magnificently austere high-mountain settings.