Mainit Hot Spring (Bontoc)

Mainit Hot Spring at Bontoc is a natural sulfurous hot spring in the Mountain Province of the Cordillera Administrative Region, Luzon, Philippines, where geothermal waters associated with the volcanic and tectonic activity of northern Luzon emerge in the highland landscape of the Chico River valley — the traditional heartland of the Bontoc people, one of the indigenous Igorot nations whose ancestral domain encompasses some of the Philippines' most dramatically terraced mountain landscapes. The springs provide natural therapeutic bathing in a cultural landscape shaped by millennia of Bontoc rice terrace agriculture, traditional weaving, and the warrior culture whose head-hunting practices ended only in the 20th century but whose fierce independence preserved Bontoc communities from Spanish colonial assimilation for over three centuries. The Bontoc highlands, adjacent to the extraordinary Banaue Rice Terraces (UNESCO World Heritage Site), frame the hot spring experience in one of the Philippines' most culturally intact indigenous mountain communities.