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.
From Zacatecas it runs 343 km to Zacatecas; allow about 5 h 42 of riding. The stops in between: Sanctuary of Plateros, Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir and back through Sanctuary of Plateros. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. The line favours views over speed.
Silver built Zacatecas, and the city still wears it like a coat. In 1546, a few years after the Spanish crushed the Indigenous rising of the Mixtón War, prospectors found a rich vein in the hills here, and within a generation the town was one of the wealthiest in the Americas, shipping silver across the Atlantic and bankrolling the Spanish crown. The money went into churches and mansions, and the centre, listed by UNESCO in 1993, is a tight, steep tangle of pink-stone buildings in a ravine between two hills, 2,400 metres above the sea.
Read the complete Historic centre of the city of Zacatecas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Historic centre of the city of Zacatecas is where the day begins. Next is Sanctuary of Plateros.
Plateros is a small town on the edge of the high desert plateau in Zacatecas, a few kilometres from the silver city of Fresnillo, and it exists, more or less, because of one small figure on an altar. The Santo Nino de Atocha, a child dressed as a pilgrim and carrying a basket and a staff, is revered here as a protector of travellers, prisoners and the sick. The devotion came from Spain, where the original image belongs to the shrine of Atocha in Madrid, and it was carried across the Atlantic by the Spanish miners who came for Zacatecas silver. The sanctuary at Plateros became one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Mexico.
Read the complete Sanctuary of Plateros write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sanctuary of Plateros comes up about 66 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 172 km into the recorded legs you reach Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir. Next is back through Sanctuary of Plateros.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sanctuary of Plateros write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sanctuary of Plateros, late in the day. Next is Historic centre of the city of Zacatecas.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic centre of the city of Zacatecas write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Historic centre of the city of Zacatecas. That is the ride.
Historic centre of the city of Zacatecas → Sanctuary of Plateros is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sanctuary of Plateros → Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir is 106 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Wixárika Route through Sacred Sites to Wir → back through Sanctuary of Plateros is 106 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Sanctuary of Plateros → Historic centre of the city of Zacatecas is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.