Cupatitzio Thermal Baths

Cupatitzio Thermal Baths serves a city whose Purépecha name means 'the place where flowers are always blooming' — a fitting description for Uruapan's lush, well-watered landscape at the foot of the Paricutin volcano, one of the world's youngest and most famous volcanoes, which erupted without warning in a cornfield on February 20, 1943, burying the nearby villages of Paricutin and San Juan Parangaricutiro and building a 424-meter cone in just nine years. The half-buried church tower of San Juan Parangaricutiro, emerging from the hardened lava field, has become one of Mexico's most haunting and photographed images of geological power overwhelming human settlement. The region is also the global epicenter of avocado production — Michoacan supplies more than 80 percent of Mexico's export avocados — and the bicarbonate mineral waters of the thermal baths, rising through volcanic geology in the world's avocado heartland in the shadow of a newborn volcano, offer bathing experiences embedded in one of Mexico's most dramatically geological and agriculturally rich landscapes.