Who's a sucker for a hot spring?

If you want to see me get my clothes off super fast, point me to one. I think my favourite was in Saturnia, Tuscany, for my honey moon - think loved up and full moon and sulphurous waters, tres romantique - and the only other one I've had was somewhere in New Zealand which wasn't that brilliant as it was more like a public pool where you smelt of eggs afterwoods. Yipee.

But these hot springs in the Geres Penida NP (I think it was just over the border in Spain?) were just delightful. I think there's a few in the area - the Romans would have loved them. We parked at the end of a long day's drive and leapt in. The central, large pool was quite hot - I'm not sure how much, but you had to acclimatise a little and couldn't stay in too long. These photos were from the morning which wasn't as busy as the afternoon where there were about 15 other people in the space with us, mainly Spanish.

After you roasted in the upper pool, you could go to the river below for a freezing dip (which I enjoyed) and then find a pool the perfect temperature. Hot water (burn your feet kinda hot) would flow into the people made pools and be tempered by a flow of cold water from the river. The sandy bank and pebbles made for perfect building materials to make these mini pools, which seemed constantly under construction.

The only thing I didn't like was the large building to one side, which took some of the 'natural' feel from it. And boy it would have been so busy in the holiday period! Still, we enjoyed it.

As for a free camp, there was one just up the road which we stayed at which seemed really quiet until the middle of the night when we were kept awake by people in the springs below - clearly a bit of a place for a party, which isn't suprising!