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 Trancoso it runs 237 km to Trancoso; allow about 4 h 06 of riding. On the way it passes Tatei Nihuetucame, 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 Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Royal Road of the Interior, ran for more than two and a half thousand kilometres from Mexico City to Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico, and carried silver, mercury, supplies and missionaries for nearly three hundred years. UNESCO inscribed a series of its sections and sites in 2010, and the stretch near Ojocaliente, in the state of Zacatecas, passes through high, dry country at around two thousand metres, with the town of Trancoso eight kilometres away and the city of Zacatecas to the west.
Read the complete Stretch of the Camino Real between Ojocali write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stretch of the Camino Real between Ojocali is where the day begins. Next is Tatei Nihuetucame.
Zacatecas sits high in the Mexican north, around 2,400 metres above the sea, in a bowl of red hills that were once a mountain of silver. The Spanish arrived in the 1540s after local people showed them silver outcrops, and within a few decades the city was one of the richest in the New World, its wealth carried south on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, the Royal Road of the Interior Land that ran all the way to Santa Fe. The old centre, with its pink-stone cathedral, narrow stepped lanes and colonial mansions, is inscribed as World Heritage, and the road itself is listed too.
Read the complete Tatei Nihuetucame write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Tatei Nihuetucame comes up about 47 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 80 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 119 km, about halfway. Next is back through Tatei Nihuetucame.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Tatei Nihuetucame write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Tatei Nihuetucame comes up about 190 km into the recorded legs. Next is Stretch of the Camino Real between Ojocali.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stretch of the Camino Real between Ojocali write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stretch of the Camino Real between Ojocali closes the day.
Stretch of the Camino Real between Ojocali → Tatei Nihuetucame is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Tatei Nihuetucame → Cacai Mutijé is 33 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 Tatei Nihuetucame is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Tatei Nihuetucame → Stretch of the Camino Real between Ojocali is 48 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.