Temple and Former Convent of Saint Dominic and Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
290 km
Riding-time estimate
4 h 58
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
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 Hueyapan it runs 290 km to Hueyapan; allow about 4 h 58 of riding. The stops in between: Xochimilco 3, Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan and back through Xochimilco 3. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,850 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Temple and Former Convent of Saint Dominic
Hueyapan sits high on the southern flank of Popocatépetl, in the far northeast of Morelos, where pine forest and orchards climb toward the volcano and the air is noticeably thinner than in the valleys below. In the sixteenth century, Dominican friars built a convent here dedicated to Santo Domingo, with a simple church, a cloister and a walled atrium where the indigenous population gathered for worship. It is one of the fourteen sites in the UNESCO listing of the Earliest Sixteenth-Century Monasteries on the Slopes of Popocatépetl, and while it is more modest than some of its neighbours, its setting is one of the most dramatic.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Temple and Former Convent of Saint Dominic is where the day begins. Next is Xochimilco 3.
2. Xochimilco 3
San Andrés Mixquic sits on the southeastern edge of Mexico City, in the borough of Tláhuac, and it feels like a village despite being part of one of the largest cities on earth. It is famous throughout Mexico for its Day of the Dead celebrations, when the cemetery around the church of San Andrés fills with marigolds, candles and families who keep vigil through the night of 2 November, and the whole town turns into a festival of altars, music and food. The rest of the year, Mixquic is a quiet place of canals, chinampas and vegetable fields.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Xochimilco 3 comes up about 72 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan.
3. Pre-Hispanic City of Teotihuacan
When the Aztecs came across Teotihuacan, centuries after it had been abandoned, they thought it must have been built by gods and named it the place where the gods were made. The city had reached its peak between about the first and sixth centuries, with perhaps well over a hundred thousand people, a grid of streets, apartment compounds and some of the largest pyramids in the Americas. The Pyramid of the Sun is a huge stepped mass, and the Pyramid of the Moon sits at the far end of the Avenue of the Dead, a long, broad processional road that makes the city feel grand even now.