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 277 km round trip from Guadalupe - roughly 5 h 38 in the saddle. The stops in between: Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, Cacai Mutijé, Cupuri Mutiu and back through Cacai Mutijé. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.
South of Zacatecas, on the high plateau of northern Mexico, the old Camino Real de Tierra Adentro passes through a landscape of dry hills, maize fields and mesquite. This was the royal road of the interior, the great artery that ran from Mexico City for more than two and a half thousand kilometres north to Santa Fe, in what is now New Mexico, and it was the backbone of Spanish colonial expansion. Wagons and mule trains carried the silver from the mines of Zacatecas and Guanajuato south to the capital and the coast, while settlers, soldiers, priests and goods made their way north. Along the route, haciendas, chapels, bridges and towns grew up, and today sixty sites, including the historic centre of Zacatecas, form a World Heritage route.
Read the complete Camino Real de Tierra Adentro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Camino Real de Tierra Adentro comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cacai Mutijé.
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.
about 99 km into the recorded legs you reach Cacai Mutijé. 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.
Cupuri Mutiu, about halfway. Next is back through 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.
back through Cacai Mutijé sits at 151 km, about halfway. Next is back through Camino Real de Tierra Adentro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Camino Real de Tierra Adentro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Camino Real de Tierra Adentro comes up about 237 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal closes the day.
Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal → Camino Real de Tierra Adentro is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Camino Real de Tierra Adentro → Cacai Mutijé is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cacai Mutijé → Cupuri Mutiu is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cupuri Mutiu → back through Cacai Mutijé is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cacai Mutijé → back through Camino Real de Tierra Adentro is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Camino Real de Tierra Adentro → Former college of Nuestra Señora de Guadal is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.