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.
A 452 km round trip from Malpaso - roughly 8 h 15 in the saddle. The stops in between: Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal, Cupuri Mutiu, Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir and Cuyetsarie. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Out here on the high plateau west of Zacatecas the land is all wide sky, nopal, mesquite and red-brown earth, and it takes a while to understand that you are standing on a pilgrimage path. Cacai Mutijé is one of the sacred places of the Wixárika, the people outsiders long called Huichol, on the route their pilgrims follow from their home communities in the Sierra Madre Occidental across Zacatecas to Wirikuta, the desert of San Luis Potosí where they gather hikuri, the peyote cactus, and where in their cosmology the sun was born. The path has been walked for centuries and was recognised by UNESCO only recently, which tells you something about how long the rest of the world took to notice.
Read the complete Cacai Mutijé write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cacai Mutijé is where the day begins. Next is Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal.
Zacatecas was built on silver, and the town next to it, Guadalupe, was built on faith. In the middle of the eighteenth century a Franciscan college was founded here to train missionaries who would go north into the unconquered country, and its big church, cloisters and long galleries still stand on the edge of the city, now serving as a museum of colonial art with paintings, carved altarpieces and religious objects. The college once sent friars as far as Texas and California.
Read the complete Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cupuri Mutiu.
Jerez de García Salinas is the reason most riders end up here, and it is a happy accident if they do. This colonial town in the west of Zacatecas state, a couple of kilometres from the point, is a Pueblo Mágico with a leafy plaza, an ornate little theatre, the Teatro Hinojosa, said to be modelled on Ford's Theatre in Washington, and the childhood home of Ramón López Velarde, the poet whose verses about provincial Mexico every schoolchild there knows. Jerez is a ranchero town at heart, with saddle makers, boot shops and men in hats, and the Easter fair with its horses and music draws people from across the region.
Read the complete Cupuri Mutiu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 94 km into the recorded legs you reach Cupuri Mutiu. Next is Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir.
West of Jerez, in Zacatecas, the land starts to fold into the long ridges of the Sierra Madre Occidental, and somewhere in these hills runs the path that Wixárika pilgrims follow from their homeland in the mountains of Jalisco and Nayarit toward Wirikuta, their sacred desert far to the east. The route, listed by UNESCO in 2025, is not a road in the usual sense but a chain of sacred places, springs, hills and caves where the pilgrims stop to pray, leave offerings and remember the journey of their ancestors, who according to tradition walked this way at the beginning of the world.
Read the complete Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir, about halfway. Next is Cuyetsarie.
This is a point on the high plateau where Zacatecas, Jalisco and Durango meet, in the dry country at the edge of the northern Sierra Madre Occidental. The names of the rides, Cuyetsarie, Cacai Mutijé and Xurahue Muyaca, belong to the Wixárika people, whom outsiders call the Huichol, and refer to places in their sacred geography. Wixárika communities live in the rugged canyons of Mezquitic and Huejuquilla and the neighbouring sierra, and they keep a living tradition in which certain springs, hills and rocks are sites of offering, prayer and pilgrimage.
Read the complete Cuyetsarie write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cuyetsarie sits at 197 km, about halfway. Next is back through Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir comes up about 323 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cupuri Mutiu.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cupuri Mutiu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 359 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cupuri Mutiu. Next is back through Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal, late in the day. Next is Cacai Mutijé.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cacai Mutijé write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 452 km.
Cacai Mutijé → Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal → Cupuri Mutiu is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cupuri Mutiu → Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir → Cuyetsarie is 96 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cuyetsarie → back through Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir is 96 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir → back through Cupuri Mutiu is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cupuri Mutiu → back through Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal → Cacai Mutijé is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.