Termas Santa Ana

Termas Santa Ana serves a Pacific coast community in Manabí Province, the heartland of Ecuador's distinctive coastal culture whose people, known as montuvios in the tropical agricultural lowlands and manabitas along the coast, maintain traditions of weaving, horsemanship, and the cultivation of cacao, toquilla straw palm, and tropical fruits that form the backbone of coastal Ecuadorian economic and cultural life. Manabí is the birthplace of the Panama hat — despite its misleading name, the traditional toquilla straw hat that became internationally famous when workers building the Panama Canal wore them was invented and is still produced in Ecuador, primarily in Manabí and Azuay provinces, where the toquilla weaving tradition is inscribed on the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list. The bicarbonate thermal springs of Santa Ana, rising from the geological substrate of coastal Ecuador's complex sedimentary and volcanic formations, provide mineral bathing in a Pacific lowland landscape whose extraordinary agricultural variety — from cacao to seafood — expresses the richness of Manabí's coastal environment at the intersection of tropical ocean and Andean highland climatic influences.