The Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Royal Road of the Interior, ran for more than two and a half thousand kilometres from Mexico City to Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico, and carried silver, mercury, supplies and missionaries for nearly three hundred years. UNESCO inscribed a series of its sections and sites in 2010, and the stretch near Ojocaliente, in the state of Zacatecas, passes through high, dry country at around two thousand metres, with the town of Trancoso eight kilometres away and the city of Zacatecas to the west.
The road was born from silver. In 1546 rich deposits were found at Zacatecas, and mule trains began carrying the metal south, bringing back goods from Spain and the south. Fortified posts, missions and farms called haciendas sprang up along the route to feed and protect the convoys, and the Franciscans founded convents to convert the people of the north. Bandits and the Chichimeca peoples, who resisted the Spanish for decades, made travel risky. The old cobbled sections that survive are short, rough stretches of stone set in the earth, often with walls on either side, and they are quite moving to walk. The Franciscan college of Guadalupe, near Zacatecas, mentioned on your ride, was a centre for training missionaries and now holds a museum of colonial religious art.
The landscape is high desert grassland with nopal cactus, mesquite and scrubby hills, and the sky is huge. The main roads, Highway 45 and Highway 54, are well surfaced but carry heavy truck traffic, and the smaller roads between villages are a pleasure, with long straight stretches and low hills. Winds sweep across the plateau, afternoon thunderstorms are common in summer, and in winter nights can be freezing. The altitude means sun is strong even on cool days. Spring and autumn are the best seasons.
Fuel stations are on the main roads at Zacatecas, Guadalupe and Ojocaliente, but are rarer on the minor roads, so top up when you can. Trancoso, with fourteen thousand people, has shops and taquerías. Zacatecas, a superb colonial city with pink stone buildings and a cable car above the old silver mines, is the place to spend the night, and its local mezcal and rich stews are worth finding.