Los Azufres And What We Didn't Expect to Find On the Top of a Volcano

Cycling:
From San Pedro Jácuaro almost 20 km long climb from elevation about 2,000 m to more than 2,800 m above the sea level. The road was pretty steep and not in the best condition, with only a few places to stop and catch a breath, but luckily with very little traffic.
Learning:
- that Baška can climb the steepest hill despite of the sore throat, in the first day of her period, in the cold weather and with annoying husband behind  :-)
- that the hot springs in Los Azufres are very well hidden (or they don't exist?), instead you'll find resorts offering bath in hot water on the top of this volcano
- that all these “hot springs” are here thanks to geothermal power plant and drilled wells and huge plastic pipes distributing hot water to different resorts
- that one night in Rancho Viecho, one of resorts /camps which didn't look too crowded or too expensive, cost 99 pesos (6,7 US dollars) per person and we could camp wherever we wanted
- that the best time to take a hot bath is between nine o'clock p.m.and eight o'clock a.m.
- that 40°C water is more than hot enough, 35°C is perfect
- that bicyclists are found everywhere
- that there is no cave, despite the signs saying it
Living:
Barbora hiked to visit a small canyon close to our camping spot we had found yesterday. The “sap gatherers” are passing around our tent and don't seem to be bothered by it. All the pine trees around have deep cuts with plastic bottles on the bottom to collect their sap. Why? We didn't figure it out, we guess it is probably for incense burners in churches.
Then we started climbing up to the top of Los Azufres, visions of hot springs are boosting up our motivation to climb this crazy slope. Especially Baška felt miserable (sore-throat and some Christmas home-sickness), but little by little she is also fighting the gravitation, which for this time works very well (we found out that gravitation sometimes didn't work exactly the same way here in America as we were used to from Europe). After some tears, drops of sweat, many curves and couple of views of the valleys below, we reached the top of Los Azufres. Our search for some “natural” hot springs was unsuccessful. Some workers told us that only spring of this kind was somewhere close to Laguna Verde, which was on the other side of volcano, too far and too down for us. So we kept searching and followed the biggest clouds of steam, hoping they would lead us to some big springs - but actually and causing our big surprise, they lead us to geothermal power plant, built almost on the highest point of this volcano. How strange but perfectly logic. Now we understood where all these huge pipes came from, each one distributing hot water for pools and resorts below. We met a guy who worked in this power plant and gave us water. After short conversation we found out he was a cyclist too and his dream was to ride from Alaska to Patagonia. So we gave him some advice and told him about warmshowers.org. Our choice for camping was resort with camp named “Rancho Viejo". Although we usually prefer not to pay for nights, we didn't mind it this time - after this long and cold day it was very satisfying to spent a couple of hours in hot water, just relaxing...