Ixtapan de la Sal

Marriott Hotel

I was around 16 years old when my parents first took us to the spa at Ixtapan de la Sal in the State of Mexico. It is not to far from Mexico City and about 2 hours from Toluca where we ate longaniza verde, a green sausage that is the specialty of the area, at one of the roadside stands.  We descended into the majestic Valle del Silencio (the Valley of Silence) and stopped for a taste of a pineapple salsa served by Dona Juana, who my friend MaryJo Schwalbach immortalized in a mixed media statue with a wide smile, baring big teeth from a dentist mold, real hair and hands making a tortilla that people knocked off as they got in and out of the table right next to it.  (She is in rehabilitation now.) We then arrived in a picturesque town of houses painted in bright colors and bouganvelia in bright pink, magenta and white tumbling from pots of the low roofs and bumpy dirt roads. Though the spa had once been the place where wounded Aztec warriors were sent to be cured by the mineral mud and thermal waters, it was not impressive and the common pool smelled of rotten eggs from the sulphur in the churning thermal water.  But we soon went into one of the modest rooms and  got a glorious massage and then went into modest rooms with individual oval shaped bathtubs, natural jacuzzis. When we got tired of the heat and humidity we were wrapped in a sheet by the attendant and given a glass of freshly squeezed jugo the lima, a citrus fruit not available in this country but that tastes like a lime-on (remember the commercial?).

The last time I went with my motherm the individual baths had Roman-style tubs statues and all but it somehow still had a homey feel.  Now I hear, that major hotel chains have developed the area and it has become a popular tourist destination but that it is still nice, affordable, easily reached.  Many US citizens winter there.

Photo courtesy of the Mexico Tourism Board