Hacienda chapels tell you a lot about colonial Mexico. They were built by landowners who controlled vast estates of cattle, crops or mines, and they served as places of worship for the owners, their families and the workers who lived and laboured on the estate. The Chapel of the Refugio, once part of a hacienda near Cuencamé in the state of Durango, is one of the sites included in the UNESCO listing of the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the royal road that ran from Mexico City to Santa Fe and carried silver, goods, missionaries and settlers across the northern frontier for nearly three centuries.
The chapel stands in a landscape of dry plains and low mountains, with mesquite, creosote bush and cactus, and the remains of the hacienda buildings around it hint at a time when this was a busy, self-contained world. Many haciendas declined after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, when land reform broke up the great estates, and today their chapels are often the best-preserved parts.
The riding in this part of Durango is open and spacious, with long straight roads crossing high desert, mountains on the horizon and wide skies overhead. The main highway between Torreón and Durango passes nearby and is busy with trucks, while smaller roads to villages are quieter but rougher, with potholes, gravel and topes. Watch for livestock on the road, especially at night, and avoid riding after dark if you can.
Pedriceña and Velardeña, the nearest villages, are small, with basic shops. Velardeña has a long mining history. For reliable fuel and food, Cuencamé, about twenty-six kilometres away, is the nearest town of any size, and the city of Durango or Gómez Palacio offer every service. Local food includes caldillo durangueño, a hearty beef and chile stew, and gorditas, and the region is known for its mezcal.
Come in the cooler months, from October to April, when days are warm and nights cold. Summers can be very hot, and the rainy season brings afternoon storms. It is a small, plain building, and that is its charm: a whitewashed refuge in a hard country, exactly as its name suggests.