The Spa Solution : Relief for the stressed-out, from low-cost to luxury : Mexico: Calming mineral springs at soothing prices

A plume of dust hung over the taxi as it skidded to a halt. Muttering, the driver climbed out. Now what, I wondered.

A heavy iron gate inexplicably barred the way into the Rancho Rio Caliente spa that I’d just spent an hour bumping over rutted mountain roads trying to get to.

It looked possible to squeeze around the gate on foot. But as I stumbled out, suitcase in hand, the driver shook his head. “Caliente,” he said, pointing at something past the roadblock.

A river--shallow, but too wide to leap--bubbled and foamed over the dirt path. Wisps of steam curled from its surface.

Of course. Rio Caliente--hot river. Water that gushed from its source, a volcanic spring, at 157 degrees Fahrenheit. A river that gave this out-of-the-way spa, in an ancient valley 20 miles northwest of Guadalajara, not only its name but its magical qualities as a healing place.

Moments later, wobbling in inadequate sandals across a rickety footbridge, I wondered whether I’d gotten myself into more than just hot water with this oddball vacation idea.

I had never even been to a spa. Paying a fortune to be chided by some chirpy aerobics instructor half my age, while subsisting on rice cakes and mineral water, had never sounded appealing.

But this didn’t sound like that kind of spa.

And my first glimpse of rancho life last December--half a dozen guests bobbing languidly at one end of a pool, while a dark-eyed donkey and four horses lapped thirstily from the other--showed I’d been right. There was about as much chance of running into Liz or Liza here as of meeting a waiter in a tuxedo.

Rancho Rio Caliente is isolated, unregimented, funky . . . and definitely not for everyone. If you demand Hilton-level comforts, you’d hate it. There’s no room service, no telephone, no bar. It’s a mean walk up the mountain to the rustic dining hall, and the nearest “town”--a collection of adobe huts and a ramshackle tienda (store) or two--is five miles over dirt roads.

“I know a girl who got here and left almost immediately,” said Adriana Acauan-Tandler, 45, a librarian from Queens, N.Y. “At 5:30 she wanted to know where the margaritas were. It just wasn’t what she wanted.”

Don’t come if all you want to do is shed 15 pounds. Nobody keeps track of what you eat, and a few find the vegetarian fare--served buffet-style--so enticing that they actually gain weight.

Nor is it for compulsive joggers--the steep slopes, strewn with chunks of obsidian and pumice, make even walking hazardous. And a slip into the river at the wrong spot can result in a nasty burn.

But if you’re aching to retreat about half a century from the tensions of modern living--to soak in hot mineral waters, laze in a eucalyptus-scented steam room designed in the ancient Aztec manner, detoxify by slathering your body with the local mud, visit a primitive nunnery to see age-old techniques of natural healing at work--this just may be the spa that hits the spot.

And all at the price of a facial anywhere else: just $50 to $56 a day (single), $90 to $100 (double). That includes lodging, meals and most activities (massages and beauty treatments are extra)--a howling bargain by any standard.

Add the fact that it’s within easy reach of other popular Mexican destinations--Guadalajara, the Pacific Coast resorts of Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan, the colonial city of Morelia--and the rancho becomes still more appealing.

Even the isolation can be viewed as a plus. Caroline Durston, a transplanted Englishwoman who has been owner-manager of Rancho Rio Caliente since 1970, hasn’t put in a telephone only because no lines are available. “But a lot of people seem to like that,” she noted. “Sometimes women get out of the taxi and say in loud voices, ‘He can’t get me here!’ ”

The rancho is so busy during high season--mid-December to mid-April--that guests often reserve a year in advance. But the 5,000-foot altitude guarantees moderate weather year-round, and some actually prefer the summer, with its cooling daily thunderstorms.

Opened in 1962 by a British vegetarian and osteopath as a clinic specializing in obscure health treatments, the spa nestles on 24 hilly acres adjoining a national forest. Its 48 spare-but-comfortable, red-roofed bungalows (accommodating 80 guests) are clustered among banana trees, bougainvillea and other subtropical plants.

It’s the site--a protected canyon revered by the Huichol of a thousand years ago as a place with mystic, curative powers--that makes this spa more than just another health farm.

As pennants of steam rise from the river and blanket the rancho every morning (Durston said alarmed guests sometimes run for help, crying that the valley is afire), so do the waters of the Rio Caliente permeate every aspect of life here.

“When I wake up and see the steam rising in this great long plume, that has a real effect on me,” said 40-year-old Lynn Bevan, an attorney from Toronto visiting for the first time. “There’s a real spiritual quality to the place that comes through. It’s not just like a hot spring. This is a hot river.”

The odor-free water is slightly radioactive and rich in minerals: silica, lithium, selenium, potassium and iron, among others. It’s pumped into the swimming pools and the steam room, used for mud wraps and irrigation, even channeled into guest bathrooms (occasionally startling a guest unaccustomed to toilets that flush hot).

Life at the spa centers around the two adjoining pools at the bottom of the hill--one kept at 100 degrees for soaking, the other cooled to 80 for more energetic pursuits. Guests bob in the velvety waters all day and occasionally remain there, stargazing, far into the night. There are also two smaller, walled pools for nude sunbathing.

The water “kind of seduces you--it puts you in a place where you can let go,” said Daryn Fond, 29, an architectural designer from Los Angeles on her third trip. “It does take a couple days to adjust, but it’s a great stress release.”

Guests often say, half-jokingly, it’s the lithium in the water that makes it so relaxing. Durston believes it.

“There’s not enough to treat a manic depressive, but it probably does have a soothing effect on us all,” she said. “Guests have very often reported dramatic and revealing dreams, and just as often a dramatic sense of relaxation and peace.”

The spa attracts an offbeat mix of guests, some 90% repeat customers. Though a few are aged or infirm, this is no more the Mexican Lourdes than it is a refuge for the terminally chic.

In fact, Durston--whose usual uniform of frayed jeans and faded shirt seemed to set the casual sartorial standard--said the typical guest is a working woman from 35 to 55 “who’s decided she has a right to some time to herself.”

For many, like Lynn Bevan, the lure was the opportunity to relax.

“I was in court until seven hours before I left, and I’m going back to chair a meeting tomorrow,” she said with a grin, shaking the water from a late-afternoon swim out of her long black hair. “ That’s the kind of person who comes here.”

The rancho offers a respite from hectic schedules. Walking up to the dining hall the morning of my first day, I found the day’s entire program scrawled on a small chalkboard: 9 a.m., walk into forest; 11 a.m., yoga in gym; 5 p.m., tai chi on patio; 5:30 p.m., aquasize in pool; 8 p.m., maybe a film?

A few of the gung-ho did it all, but there was no pressure. And many just lounged by the pool, went horseback riding or bird-watching, wandered up the riverbank to sit in a natural bathing basin beneath a hot waterfall, or took siestas. Each bungalow has its own fireplace, and the pine smoke wafting from many in the evenings indicated the inhabitants had simply settled in.

There are appointments--but here the word refers to facials, manicures, massages, mud wraps, and the like. The massages and beauty treatments are $17 (with an acupuncture facial for $35), the mud wrap--in which your whole body is slathered with dark gray mud, then allowed to “bake” in the sun--a stunning bargain at $5.

Guests sign up for treatments upon arrival, and massages in particular go fast. In fact, a genteel flap erupted during my stay when one guest claimed another had “stolen” her coveted massage slot by erasing her name.

If the isolation weighs too heavily, a number of day trips--shopping in the elegant boutiques of Tlaquepaque, viewing the Orozco murals or the Ballet Folklorico in Guadalajara, touring a plant manufacturing the national beverage in the town of Tequila--are available for $12 to $20.

One of the most fascinating side trips requires nothing more than walking a few hundred yards down the dirt road to a tiny, primitive Franciscan nunnery. There, two elderly nuns treat everything from varicose veins to cancer with detoxifying mudpacks, herbal poultices and teas, a vegetarian diet and other natural medicines.

Most of their patients are local. But tourists are welcome, too, and for a modest donation, Mother Delia or Mother Lydia will gaze into the irises of your eyes, diagnose your ills and prescribe a combination of lifestyle changes and herbal teas. You can buy the herbs right there--72-year-old Francisco Gutierrey goes out every morning into the nearby Jalisco hills to gather them, then dries them in the age-old manner.

I found the food very good--not at all the bland stuff I’d expected from a lacto-vegetarian menu low in sodium and fat. I had never imagined raving about a nut loaf, or taking two helpings of a dish of chickpeas, lentils and brown rice, but it happened here.

The menu derives from the spa founder’s belief in the magical properties of the papaya, and that luscious fruit still appears at every meal, joined by many fruits and vegetables, some unfamiliar outside of Mexico--guanabana, mango, guava, guayaba, jicama, zapote, chayote. Each meal also features fresh juices--banana, pineapple, hibiscus flower, watermelon and many others. The whole-grain bread is baked here, and many of the fruits and vegetables grown in the spa’s quarter-acre garden.

It was undeniably healthy . . . but slimming? Opinions vary. One guest exulted that she’s lost five or six pounds; another complained that she was eating so much she had gained three. And one 18-year-old girl, dragged to the spa by her vegetarian mother, spent her days pining for a cheeseburger and French fries.

Getting healthy was the focus, and all around me people seemed to be trying to give up bad habits. One woman was trying to make it through the week without caffeine, another to cut back on cigarettes. “What I wouldn’t give for a margarita,” or variations thereof, was heard more than once (though the spa doesn’t ban alcohol, except in public areas, it doesn’t serve it either).

For some people used to a particularly busy urban lifestyle--like Toni Smith, 38, director of support staff training for the Manhattan district attorney’s office--the isolation and lack of planned activities at the spa soon grew wearisome.

“I’m a real city person,” said Smith. “When I leave work I never go straight home. I listen to jazz. I eat out every night. So I miss that. It’s also very hard being here by yourself, unless you click with another group right away.”

But others--like Acauan-Tandler, on her “sixth or seventh” visit--find that the peculiarly seductive qualities of the hot river valley don’t fade with familiarity.

“Just the perfume in the air--eucalyptus, pine, sage--you could tie my eyes closed and I’d always know where I was, just from that special smell,” she said with a sigh.

GUIDEBOOK: Rancho Rio Caliente

How to get there: Mexicana, Delta and Aeromexico all offer daily flights from Los Angeles to Guadalajara. From there, it’s about a 40-minute drive (20 miles) over some rugged roads to Rancho Rio Caliente. Mexicana, (213) 646-9500 has four nonstop flights each day.

Round-trip fares range from $316-$391. Delta (213-386-5510, flies two nonstops per day, with round-trip fares ranging from $272-$412. Aeromexico (800-237-6639) has three nonstops, with fares ranging from $272-$322.

Accommodations: If you arrive at the airport after 8 p.m., it’s best to stay overnight in Guadalajara (spa gates close at 10 p.m.). If you want to splurge on a hotel, try the five-star Camino Real or the Holiday Inn, each charging about $100 a night. For more modest lodgings, try the Fenix, the Hotel Francis (a converted colonial mansion) or the modern De Mendoza, all in the colonial heart of the city and in the $30-$40 range. The last two offer a 10% discount to spa visitors.

For more information: To make reservations at Rancho Rio Caliente, contact the spa’s U.S. agent, Barbara Dane Associates, 480 California Terrace, Pasadena 91105, (818) 796-5577.