There is a lake behind the volcano. This is where we will wash off the mud later on.
There are changing rooms for those who need them. Most of us came prepared and wore our swimsuits underneath our clothes and took our shirts and shorts off inside the bus. Bernardo tells us to leave everything in the bus and it will be locked. He tells us to leave our money in the bus and just before we leave one of the villagers will approach the bus for tips that will be shared amongst them. Anyone tipped privately will likely not share.
Wearing only my swimsuit and shoes and carrying a Princess Cruises towel from our cabins, we approach the stair to climb to the mud bath. One of the village women instructs us to remove our shoes and she places them in a sack and also takes our towels. We climb the stairs. Kerry is carrying our camera and takes some photos. We are told that one of the villagers at the top will take our camera and take photos for us while we’re in the mud.
The mud bath is packed because of our cruise ship passengers. It takes a little while before we get a turn into the mud and there are at least ten others inside plus 2 or 3 village men who help cover our bodies with mud. The mud is supposed to have healing properties. I don’t know about that because Kerry still has a scar on his arm from the surgery and its not healed yet. I float in the mud and get a lot of mud all over me and into my hair before one of the men comes over to slather mud on me. Kerry is pushed to another part of the mud and has a villager rubbing mud on him. The mud is comfortably warm and very buoyant. You can’t sink in the stuff. Its difficult to move around in it but it was a lot of fun trying to get from one end to the other.
When we emerge at the ladder another village man is there to wipe off the excess mud.
We walk down a rather steep stairway back to the road that leads to the lake where we wash off. Good thing too because I have mud in places where I never thought I would ever have mud! My shoes are nowhere in sight. Apparently the village women have taken the shoes and towels closer to the lake. Once inside the lake is an interesting experience. The village women wash the mud off. They’re really good at getting everyone clean. We go into water that is not very deep, maybe knee high and sit down and they scrub away. The water itself is murky so you can’t really see beneath the surface which is a good thing because now they want us to remove our swimsuits so we can finish washing off our mud and they will rinse out our swimsuits. Its no easy feat getting a wet swimsuit back on again underwater while trying to remain modest. Once I’m out of the water I collect my shoes and towel and go back to the bus to pull on my shirts and shorts.
We wander around the village a bit waiting for the rest of our group to finish so we can leave. I see a dog and puppies and go over to pet them. The old lady sitting nearby tells me there are fifteen puppies and two mama dogs who had the puppies between them. Very cute, a little spotted, almost like some kind of weird Dalmatian cross. I want to take one home with me! We wander back to the bus and I walked off a little bit to look at things but Kerry called me back. One of the ladies from our bus is asking one of the village men for her husband’s watch and hearing aid but he doesn’t understand English. Her husband had forgotten to remove them in the bus and at the top of the hill the villagers told him to remove them. Take them in the mud and take your chances. I speak some Spanish and asked for a watch and I haven’t the slightest idea how to say hearing aid in Spanish so I told him I didn’t know the word but it’s a thing that you put in the ear in order to hear. He pulled two watches out of one pocket and the woman pointed to the one that belonged to her husband. He reached into his other pocket and pulled out the hearing aid. Eeeww. The man who’d been taking photos with our camera came back down the hill and we were able to take some photos of the dogs before we left.
If you are a geocacher, the Totumo Mud Bath Volcano is an earth cache. Don't forget to bring your GPS and take a photo of yourself in front of the volcano. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=ceea24a4-d0ce-4e13-8d79-71312146cc12
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