Aguas Termales de Yanayacu

Aguas Termales de Yanayacu is a natural thermal spring in Tingo canton, Pastaza Province, Ecuador, in the Amazon basin foothills of the Ecuadorian Andes — the Oriente region where the Andes descend sharply to the vast Amazonian lowland in a landscape of cloud forest, waterfalls, indigenous Kichwa and Shuar communities, and the extraordinary biodiversity of the Amazon River's headwater tributaries. The name Yanayacu combines the Quechua words yana (black/dark) and yacu (water), evoking the dark mineral-rich color of the thermal spring waters that emerge from the hydrothermal systems associated with the volcanic and geothermal activity of the Eastern Cordillera of the Andes, where the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American continent generates both the volcanic arc and the deep hydrothermal circulation that produces Ecuador's numerous thermal springs. The thermal waters of Yanayacu in the Amazonian foothills offer a distinctly rainforest thermal bathing experience, emerging in one of the earth's most biodiverse landscapes where the thermal spring culture of the Andean Indigenous peoples meets the extraordinary biological richness of the upper Amazon drainage basin.