Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac and Hospicio Cabañas
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
218 km
Riding-time estimate
3 h 53
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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.
A 218 km round trip from Amatitán - roughly 3 h 53 in the saddle. The stops in between: Zona nucleo 02, Hospicio Cabañas and back through Zona nucleo 02. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,650 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Scenic road chapters
Ruta del Tequila
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 49 km this is Ruta del Tequila, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Chapter facts
Length
49 km
Named road
Ruta del Tequila
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Fac is where the day begins. Next is Zona nucleo 02.
2. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Zona nucleo 02 comes up about 49 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hospicio Cabañas.
3. Hospicio Cabañas
The Hospicio Cabañas is one of the great buildings of Guadalajara and arguably of the whole of Latin America, a neoclassical complex of low, long wings and twenty-three courtyards that covers more than two hectares. Bishop Juan Cruz Ruiz de Cabañas founded it at the turn of the nineteenth century as an orphanage, hospital and home for the poor, and the architect Manuel Tolsá designed it, with construction between 1805 and 1810. For nearly two hundred years it sheltered thousands of children and the elderly.