🇧🇷 Brazil · Central-West
Caldas Novas is, plainly put, Brazil's thermal water capital: the largest hydrothermal spa area in the world, an inland town in Goiás built literally around the hot water that rises from the ground. There is no sea here and no snowy mountains; there are steaming open-air pools, waterslides, slow rivers of warm water, spas and resorts where the main attraction is getting into the water and never getting out. The water comes out of the ground at between 40 and 57 degrees entirely naturally, with no volcanoes involved, and almost every hotel in town has its own thermal pools.
The destination actually has two hearts, very close to each other. On one side, the town of Caldas Novas, with dozens of hotels, pousadas and resorts with their own thermal pools, in-town water parks (such as the diRoma Acqua Park and the Water Park) and hot-water clubs, plus outings like the historic Lagoa Quente do Pirapitinga and the Jardim Japonés. On the other, the neighboring district of Rio Quente, half an hour away, home to the huge Rio Quente Resorts complex with the Hot Park and the Praia do Cerrado, the largest artificial beach of natural hot water on the planet.
It is a destination built for resting and for traveling with family: whole days in the water, activities for the kids, Goiás cooking (empadão, pequi, galinhada) and a calm pace. But it has a nature side too: the Parque Estadual da Serra de Caldas Novas, the first conservation unit in Goiás, offers trilhas through the cerrado, cold-water waterfalls and a lookout more than a thousand meters up. Caldas Novas mixes the simple pleasure of floating in warm water with a setting of hills and Cerrado vegetation that many people never expect to find.
The history of Caldas Novas is the history of its hot water. Long before the colonizers, the region was inhabited by Indigenous peoples, above all the Caiapó (and also Xavante groups), who already knew and used the water that came warm out of the earth. The European 'discovery' arrived in the middle of the gold cycle: around 1722, expeditions of the bandeira of Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva (the Anhanguera), searching for gold across the Goiás backlands, came upon the hot springs. Later, in 1777, the bandeirante Martinho (Martim) Coelho de Siqueira is credited with the 'rediscovery' of the two main springs —the Caldas de Pirapitinga and those of the Córrego das Lavras, the latter called 'Caldas Novas'— when, so the story goes, his hunting dogs walked into a lagoon that was boiling. In 1788 he obtained a sesmaria (a colonial land grant) and gold extraction began: the two things that populated the area were precisely gold and thermal water. For a long time the place was little more than a rural hamlet where people came to take curative baths; only at the end of the 19th century did the water start attracting bathers, and the real tourist calling took off from the 1970s on, with the first hotels with thermal pools and, in parallel, the development of neighboring Rio Quente (whose Hotel Pousada opened in 1964). A key environmental milestone was the creation, in 1970, of the Parque Estadual da Serra de Caldas Novas, the state's first conservation unit, precisely to protect the range where the rainwater that feeds the whole thermal system seeps in. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The state of the Central-West and the Cerrado: land of the colonial gold of Goiás Velho, of the hot springs of Caldas Novas and of the landscapes of the Chapada dos Veadeiros, one of Brazil's great natural sanctuaries.
Read the history of Goiás →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The first thing to understand about Caldas Novas is why the water comes hot out of the ground. And the answer is surprising: there is no volcano. For a long time the Serra de Caldas was believed to be an extinct volcano, precisely because of its elliptical shape seen from above, which looked like the rim of a crater. That hypothesis was discarded long ago: there is no volcanic rock in the region. The shape of the range is the result of very ancient tectonic processes —folds in the Earth's crust hundreds of millions of years old— not of eruptions.
What actually happens is a geothermal phenomenon. Rainwater seeps in at the top of the Serra de Caldas, which rises around a thousand meters above sea level. That cold water penetrates deep through fractures in the rock, beneath a layer of impermeable schist held up by permeable quartzite, and descends more than a thousand meters. Down there it is heated by the natural warmth radiating from the Earth's interior. Then, heated and under pressure, it rises again through other fissures and surfaces warm or hot, depending on the well, at between around 40 and 57 degrees (with readings at some points reporting even higher temperatures).
The system is enormous: there are more than 80 catalogued wells delivering over a million liters of hot water an hour, which is why Caldas Novas is considered the largest hydrothermal spa area (or spring system) in the world. The key to all of it is the Serra de Caldas: that is where the rainwater feeding the aquifer is captured. Protecting that range is therefore not an environmental luxury but a necessity: without that recharge zone, the thermal system would stop working. Geologists also agree that this is ancient water, having seeped in hundreds or even thousands of years ago.
Long before the European colonizers arrived, the region of Caldas Novas was already inhabited. Its first inhabitants were Indigenous peoples, above all the Caiapó (Kayapó), and also Xavante groups. They lived off the river and the bush: they fished, hunted, grew their food, made weapons, pottery, musical instruments and work in plant fibers. The Cerrado and its waters were their world.
These peoples knew the hot springs long before any bandeirante did. The water that came warm or hot out of the earth was part of their everyday landscape. In fact, the name of one of the most famous springs, Pirapitinga, comes from an Indigenous language: it was the name they gave to a clear-water fish that lived in the area, usually translated as 'white fish'. That place name is one of the marks those peoples left on today's map.
The arrival of the bandeirantes in the 18th century, at the height of the gold rush, changed everything for good. As happened across much of inland Brazil, the colonial advance displaced and decimated the original populations. The memory of the Caiapó survives above all in the names and in the understanding that the hot water was not 'discovered' out of nowhere: it was already part of an inhabited, known territory. Acknowledging that earlier presence is part of telling the history of Caldas Novas honestly.
The European 'discovery' of the hot springs is tied to the gold cycle and to the bandeiras, the expeditions that set out from São Paulo to explore the interior in search of metals and labor. Tradition has it that around 1722, groups from the bandeira of the celebrated Bartolomeu Bueno da Silva —the Anhanguera— crossing the Goiás backlands in search of gold, came upon the hot springs. This was the era in which gold-bearing Goiás was opening up, and the Portuguese Crown, hungry for mineral wealth, took note of that water for possible future exploitation.
The best-remembered milestone, however, comes later. The bandeirante Martinho (also cited as Martim) Coelho de Siqueira is credited with the 'rediscovery' of the two main springs, around 1777. Legend says he was out hunting when his dogs walked into a lagoon that seemed to be boiling: that is how he is said to have come upon the phenomenon again. He identified two springs: the Caldas de Pirapitinga and those of the Córrego das Lavras, the latter christened 'Caldas Novas' (New Hot Springs), to distinguish them from other caldas already known. That name would end up naming the town.
In 1788 Martinho Coelho obtained a sesmaria (a land grant) of three leagues in the Santa Cruz region and began extracting gold along the banks of the streams. The first dwellings grew out of that mining. Two factors, then, explain the settlement of the area: the gold found in the watercourses and the thermal water itself. When the gold began to run out, it was the hot water that, much later, would give Caldas Novas a destiny of its own.
For much of its history, Caldas Novas was little more than a small rural hamlet beside the hot springs. People from the region used that water for 'curative' baths: it was credited with properties that eased pain, relaxed the body and improved health. This was homemade, artisanal thermalism, a world away from today's big resorts.
It was only at the end of the 19th century that the water began drawing bathers from outside, who traveled there attracted by the reputation of its properties. Administratively, the settlement gained standing little by little: in 1857 the district of Caldas Novas was created (within the municipality of Morrinhos) and, after a first request was rejected in 1908, state Law no. 393 of 5 July 1911 finally granted it political autonomy, with Colonel Bento de Godoy as its first mayor. That is how Caldas Novas found its calling as a destination for health and rest, a way of 'taking the waters' much like the old European spa towns. The idea of coming to be cured and to relax in hot water was, for a long time, the main draw of the place, well before the slides and the wave pools.
An honest caveat is in order, one that tourism material itself acknowledges: the waters of Caldas Novas and Rio Quente are above all thermal and relaxing, rather than strictly 'medicinal' in a clinical sense. The heat and the minerals help muscle relaxation and wellbeing, which is why it falls under health tourism according to bodies such as the World Tourism Organization; but they are not a miracle cure. That wellness side —baths, spa, rest— remains to this day one of the essences of the destination, even after the town turned into a major hub of family tourism.
The great leap of Caldas Novas and neighboring Rio Quente into mass tourism happened in the second half of the 20th century. A decisive milestone was the opening, in 1964, of the Hotel Pousada in Rio Quente, next to the Parque das Fontes: it was the beginning of an organized hotel industry built around the hot water. The 'Companhia Thermas do Rio Quente' (popularly, the Pousada do Rio Quente) was acquired in 1979 by business groups that bet heavily on developing tourism in the area.
In Caldas Novas, the real explosion came from the 1970s on, when the first hotels with thermal pools were built. The fame of the hot water spread across every state in Brazil, and by the late 1980s charter flights were bringing tourists from all over the country. The town filled with hotels, pousadas and resorts, almost all with their own thermal pools, and established itself as one of the great family and rest-and-relax destinations of inland Brazil.
The Rio Quente Resorts complex kept growing: in 1997 it opened Hot Park, later ranked among the most visited water parks in the world, and in 2008 it opened the Praia do Cerrado, the largest artificial beach of natural hot water on the planet, fed by the eighteen thermal springs on the site. So what had begun as a hamlet of curative baths turned into a tourist hub receiving several million visitors a year, with an economy given over almost entirely to hot water.
The tourist growth of Caldas Novas rests on an environmental foundation that many visitors never hear about: the Parque Estadual da Serra de Caldas Novas (PESCaN), created in 1970. It was the first conservation unit in the state of Goiás, and it was no decorative gesture: its purpose was precisely to protect the part of the range where the rainwater seeps in and, after descending and heating up in the depths, feeds the whole thermal system. In other words, without this protected range, the region's hot water could stop flowing.
The park covers some 123 km² between the municipalities of Caldas Novas and Rio Quente, barely 5 km from the center of Caldas Novas, on a flat-topped range crowned by a large plateau more than a thousand meters up. It is a strict protection unit, with typical Cerrado vegetation, trilhas open to the public, cold-water waterfalls —such as the Cachoeira da Confusão and the Cachoeira do Paredão— and lookouts with wide views over the region.
Recognition of its importance went beyond the local: in 2005, the Serra de Caldas Novas was listed among the most important geological sites in Brazil by the specialist commission working to geological heritage criteria. Creating the park also marked a change in outlook: understanding that tourism in Caldas Novas is not sustained by hotels and parks alone, but by conserving the range that is, literally, the source of everything. It is the natural and at the same time strategic face of a destination famous for its hot water.