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 229 km round trip from Jesús María - roughly 3 h 48 in the saddle. On the way it passes Jesuit Block, Estancia of Alta Gracia and back through Jesuit Block. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,050 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Jesuits were more than priests. In seventeenth-century Córdoba, in the heart of what is now Argentina, they ran a university, a network of missions and a string of estancias, ranches whose profits paid for their schools. Santa Catalina, founded in 1622 in the foothills of the Sierras Chicas, was the biggest of them, and the buildings you see today are a handsome cluster of church, cloister, workshops and quarters set around a quiet courtyard. The church, with a baroque front of whitewashed stone and a bell tower, was completed in the mid-eighteenth century, shortly before the Spanish crown expelled the order from its colonies in 1767.
Read the complete Estancia of Santa Catalina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Estancia of Santa Catalina is where the day begins. Next is Jesuit Block.
The oldest university in Argentina is a block in the middle of Córdoba. When the Jesuits arrived in 1599 they began what became the Manzana Jesuítica, a whole city block with a church, a college and a university, and in 1613 they founded the Colegio Máximo, which developed into the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, one of the oldest in the Americas. The Iglesia de la Compañía, begun in the 1640s and finished some decades later, has a wonderful wooden ceiling shaped like an upturned ship's hull, built by craftsmen who knew about boats, with beams of local timber joined without nails. The block, together with the Jesuit estancias in the countryside, was listed by UNESCO in 2000.
Read the complete Jesuit Block write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jesuit Block comes up about 73 km into the recorded legs. Next is Estancia of Alta Gracia.
Alta Gracia sits where the Córdoba plains begin to buckle into the Sierras Chicas, and its Jesuit estancia is the reason the town exists. The Jesuits established the estate in the seventeenth century, and by the eighteenth it was a thriving enterprise: a church, a residence around a cloister, workshops, and an ingenious dam with a reservoir feeding irrigation canals. It was part of the great network of Jesuit properties around Córdoba, collectively a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000, which funded the university and college in the city.
Read the complete Estancia of Alta Gracia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 111 km into the recorded legs you reach Estancia of Alta Gracia. Next is back through Jesuit Block.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jesuit Block write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Jesuit Block, late in the day. Next is Estancia of Santa Catalina.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Estancia of Santa Catalina write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Estancia of Santa Catalina. That is the ride.
Estancia of Santa Catalina → Jesuit Block is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Jesuit Block → Estancia of Alta Gracia is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Estancia of Alta Gracia → back through Jesuit Block is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Jesuit Block → Estancia of Santa Catalina is 74 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.