Aguas Termales de Calientes

Aguas Termales de Calientes in the Pachía district of the Tacna region in extreme southern Peru is a thermal spring site in the arid canyon landscape of the western Andean foothills near the Chilean border, where geothermally heated waters emerge from the volcanic and fault systems of the Tacna-Arica arc volcanic zone in one of Peru's most geopolitically and historically significant border regions — the zone that was disputed between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile after the War of the Pacific (1879-1884) and that remains a sensitive point of Peruvian-Chilean border relations. The hot springs of the Tacna region reflect the intense geothermal heat flow of the southern Peruvian volcanic arc, where the subducting Nazca Plate generates the magmatic activity responsible for the active volcanoes of the Andean volcanic zone including Tutupaca, Ticsani, and Ubinas. The thermal waters provide a naturally heated mineral bathing resource in the austere canyon landscape of the Caplina River drainage basin, where the hot springs have served the local communities of this remote and historically complex southern frontier of Peru for generations.