The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the royal road of the interior, ran for more than two thousand kilometres from Mexico City north to Santa Fe in present-day New Mexico, and for close to three centuries it carried silver south and settlers, soldiers, priests and goods north. Along it grew towns, missions, bridges and haciendas, and the former hacienda of Cieneguilla, on the high plain in the state of Aguascalientes, is one of the places inscribed by UNESCO in 2010 as part of that route.
A hacienda in colonial Mexico was a world unto itself: a big house for the owner, chapel, granaries, stables, workshops and housing for the workers, surrounded by fields and pasture. Many of them supplied the mining towns of the north with grain, mules and meat. What survives at Cieneguilla is the shell of such an estate, with thick walls and arches of local stone standing on the plain, a reminder of the wealth and the hardship that the silver road brought with it.
The landscape here is the high central plateau, around nineteen hundred metres above sea level, with dry grassland, mesquite and nopal cactus, farms irrigated in the river valleys, and mountains on the horizon. The light is sharp and the sky enormous. Mornings can be cool, even cold in winter, and afternoons hot; in the summer rainy season, storms build up over the hills in the afternoon and break with sudden force, so plan to ride early.
The roads in the area are a mixture: wide, straight federal highways between the cities, with fast traffic and heavy trucks, and smaller country roads that are quieter but can have potholes, speed bumps in every village, and the odd herd of cattle. The topes, the speed bumps, are the first thing every rider in Mexico learns to fear; some are unmarked and brutal. To the west, the road toward Calvillo, known for its guavas, climbs into hills with better curves.
Fuel is easy in Villa Hidalgo, fifteen kilometres away, and in Aguascalientes city, a short ride to the east, which has everything. The city is famous for the Feria de San Marcos, one of the biggest fairs in Mexico, held in spring, and for its old hot springs, which gave the place its name. Eat birria or enchiladas in a market and remember that you are standing on a road that once ran all the way to New Mexico.