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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
203 km from San Juan de los Cues to San Juan de los Cues, about 3 h 30 of riding. The stops in between: Purrón, San Juan Raya and back through Purrón. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,000 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Tehuacan-Cuicatlan valley is a basin of dry land in the mountains of southern Mexico, between the states of Puebla and Oaxaca, and it holds something unusual: the greatest density of columnar cacti in the world. Tall candelabra shapes, some of them ten metres high and centuries old, stand in forests across the hillsides, with agaves, yuccas and thorny shrubs around them, and in spring they flower white. UNESCO listed the valley in 2018 as a mixed site, for both its biodiversity and its human history, and it is also a biosphere reserve.
Read the complete Zapotitlan - Cuicatlán write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zapotitlan - Cuicatlán is where the day begins. Next is Purrón.
A wide dry valley, forests of cactus and, hidden among them, one of the oldest dams in the Americas. Purron is the name of a huge earthen embankment in the Tehuacan-Cuicatlan valley of southern Puebla, built perhaps two and a half thousand years ago, and over the centuries it grew to be one of the largest dams of ancient Mesoamerica, holding water for fields in a land that gets little rain. It does not look like much from the road: a long, low ridge of earth and stone, covered in scrub. But it is a testament to the farmers who lived here, in a valley where agriculture was already old when the Egyptians were building pyramids, and where early maize was grown thousands of years ago.
Read the complete Purrón write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Purrón comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is San Juan Raya.
San Juan Raya is a village in a dry valley in the state of Puebla, and it is famous for two reasons that sit oddly together: a ruined sixteenth-century chapel and the sea. The sea part is ancient. The hills around the village are made of rock laid down in a shallow marine basin more than a hundred million years ago, and they are full of fossil snails and other shells, so many that you can find them on the ground. A small local museum, run by the community, shows the best of them. The valley is part of the Tehuacan-Cuicatlan Biosphere Reserve, listed by UNESCO in 2018, partly because this is one of the places where maize and other crops were first domesticated, thousands of years ago.
Read the complete San Juan Raya write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 102 km into the recorded legs you reach San Juan Raya. Next is back through Purrón.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Purrón write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Purrón, late in the day. Next is Zapotitlan - Cuicatlán.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zapotitlan - Cuicatlán write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Zapotitlan - Cuicatlán. That is the ride.
Zapotitlan - Cuicatlán → Purrón is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Purrón → San Juan Raya is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
San Juan Raya → back through Purrón is 69 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Purrón → Zapotitlan - Cuicatlán is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.