CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
306 km from Guadalajara to Guadalajara, about 5 h 29 of riding. It goes by way of Zona nucleo 01, Zona nucleo 02, Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac and back through Zona nucleo 02. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 48 km this is Ruta del Tequila, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Guadalajara is Mexico's second city in many ways, and the heart of its mariachi and tequila traditions. Mariachi music, the charro horsemanship and the tequila spirit all trace their cultural roots to the state of Jalisco, and the capital is where they come together. The historic centre has big colonial buildings, wide plazas and a cathedral with two towers that were rebuilt after an earthquake in the nineteenth century. Murals by José Clemente Orozco, one of the great Mexican muralists, cover the walls and dome of the Hospicio Cabañas, a vast neoclassical complex that is a UNESCO site.
Read the complete Guadalajara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Guadalajara is where the day begins. Next is Zona nucleo 01.
The blue agave takes seven or eight years to ripen, and in all that time it does nothing but sit in the red volcanic soil and look like a giant spiky pineapple. Then a jimador arrives with a long-handled blade called a coa, strips the leaves, and cuts out the heart, which looks like a huge pineapple and weighs as much as a small child. The hearts are baked, crushed and fermented, and what comes out of the still is tequila. The landscape that makes this possible, the agave fields and distilleries around the town of Tequila in Jalisco, was listed as a World Heritage site in 2006.
Read the complete Zona nucleo 01 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zona nucleo 01 comes up about 54 km into the recorded legs. Next is Zona nucleo 02.
The landscape of blue agave around Tequila is the best-known piece of this part of Jalisco, but its deeper story lies in a hillside near the village of Teuchitlán, where a civilisation built circles. Between about 300 BC and AD 900, the people of what archaeologists call the Teuchitlán tradition raised round pyramids with an outer ring of platforms, in a pattern that looks from the air like a target, and the locals call them guachimontones. They did not leave a written record, and no one knows what they called themselves, but the architecture suggests ritual and perhaps astronomy. The site's main group, with several of these circles, has been excavated and restored, and it sits on a lava slope above a small lake with the cone of the Tequila volcano on the horizon.
Read the complete Zona nucleo 02 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 102 km into the recorded legs you reach Zona nucleo 02. Next is Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac.
Rows of blue-grey agave stretch across the red volcanic hills of Jalisco in lines so regular they look drawn with a ruler, and they climb the slopes of the Tequila volcano as far as the eye can see. This is the heart of the agave landscape, where the blue Weber agave has been grown for tequila for more than three hundred years, and UNESCO recognised it in 2006 with the old distilleries and towns around it.
Read the complete Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac, about halfway. Next is back through Zona nucleo 02.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zona nucleo 02 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Zona nucleo 02 sits at 160 km, about halfway. Next is back through Zona nucleo 01.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zona nucleo 01 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Zona nucleo 01 comes up about 250 km into the recorded legs. Next is Guadalajara.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Guadalajara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Guadalajara closes the day.
Guadalajara → Zona nucleo 01 is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zona nucleo 01 → Zona nucleo 02 is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Zona nucleo 02 → Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac → back through Zona nucleo 02 is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Zona nucleo 02 → back through Zona nucleo 01 is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Zona nucleo 01 → Guadalajara is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.