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.
348 km from Zacatecas to Zacatecas, about 5 h 48 of riding. On the way it passes 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.
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 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 67 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 173 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 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 at Tatei Nihuetucame. That is the ride.
Tatei Nihuetucame → Sanctuary of Plateros is 67 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 → Tatei Nihuetucame is 70 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.