Volcano Dipping

Today, we went to Volcan de Lodo El Totumo (the mud volcano). It’s a miniature volcano, 15m or about 45 feet tall, that instead of spewing ash and lava, it spews mud. Inside the volcano there is lukewarm mud with the consistency of cream or melted chocolate (at least that is how I liked to think of it) which people get to dip into and have a mud bath. In the states, people pay hundreds of dollars in a spa for a mud treatment. Down here, you can take a bus trip, about an hour or so east of Cartagena, and soak in the mud for as long as you like, get a quick chocolate mud massage, all for about $15. When you are done soaking in this incredible consistency, you climb down the stairs and rinse off in the lagoon. The mud is supposed to have therapeutic properties. I have never been in anything like it before. You climb down about 3 - 4 rungs on a ladder and then you are in this incredibly foamy, thick concoction that you are comfortably suspended in with about 15 - 20 other people. At first, I did not know how to do anything but float. It was so thick, it did not seem like I could penetrate it. A family from Colombian told me to just push my feet down and I was surprised to find how you could move through this supportive cream. We could write on the surface and it would keep what we had written or drawn.

Pictures are of the volcan, the lagoon, the people floating, yours truly getting a massage and the family from Colombia and I talking/writing.