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 Susticacán it runs 150 km to Susticacán; allow about 2 h 39 of riding. It goes by way of Cupuri Mutiu, Cacai Mutijé and back through Cupuri Mutiu. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,350 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Xurahue Muyaca
In the high dry country of southern Zacatecas, the land is cut by canyons and spiny with mesquite, nopal cactus and agave, and the names of its places are a trail of Indigenous words. They sit in the region between the villages of Susticacán and Tepetongo, in the zone south-west of Zacatecas city where the highlands begin to drop towards the Juchipila valley, and the world around them is that of the Caxcan and Zacateco peoples who held the area before the Spanish arrived.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Xurahue Muyaca is where the day begins. Next is Cupuri Mutiu.
2. 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Cupuri Mutiu comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cacai Mutijé.
3. 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.