Chancos Mineral Springs

Chancos Mineral Springs serves the Ancash highlands at the foot of the Cordillera Blanca — the world's highest tropical mountain range, whose 35 peaks above 6,000 meters include Huascarán (6,768 m), Peru's highest summit, and whose permanently glaciated peaks feed the rivers draining into the Pacific through valleys of extraordinary Andean beauty protected within Huascarán National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Nearby stands Chavín de Huantar, a UNESCO-inscribed archaeological complex and spiritual center of the Chavín civilization that flourished between 900 and 200 BC, whose underground galleries and stone carvings represent one of the most important and best-preserved pre-Inca religious sites in the Americas. The bicarbonate mineral springs of Chancos, heated by geothermal activity in the volcanic basement of the Cordillera Blanca, provide therapeutic bathing in the Andean highland environment of an area that combines some of South America's most dramatic glacier scenery with one of its most important pre-Inca archaeological legacies.