Durango to Puerto Vallarta via Highway 23

Mexico | Oct 2025 |

The Highway 23 segment of this ride was the best I did on my Mexico north-south journey 2025.

Duration & Distances

3 stops / 18 hrs riding / 655 km

Route & Rides

Here's the route and segments. You can view a dynamic Google Map below these posts.

Ride 1: Durango to Jesus Maria on Highway 23

Incredibly, Highway 23 from Durango was even more spectacular and challenging than Highway 40 going there. I couldn't find much info online on this route, mostly high-level fluff (rant here: I sometimes question whether certain bloggers actually rode some of the roads they write about, given the lack of details - ex: maps, photos - in their "ultimate guides"). Anyways: I knew it was going to be a grueling 15+ hours of riding in 2 days ahead of me, much more than my preferred 4 hours a day maximum.

Coming out of Durango, you follow a snaky route through rolling hills, with great views of higher mountains in the distance. After about 90 minutes, you reach Mexquital, where you start a long climb. At higher elevation, the road works its way through a river valley with epic scenery. About 2.5 hours into the ride you you reach a steep descent down the mountainside. This is the first of some challenging riding, gnarly road, rockfalls, potholes, and more. Further on, the scenery gets even better, followed by an eye-opening view of a surreal section of road up to the top of a mountain. This road quality here is poor, scraped and grooved - one of my least favorite surface types, where I seem to have about 60% full control of my steering, not favorable at all on the high T7. As you ascend, the road quality gets worse! For me, riding up a bad road is always better than riding down one (more to follow). And this route wasn't just up and over, down the other side. Sitting at about 2500 meters, there is an entire civilization living up here, mostly indigenous people farming on a high pueblo. After a long ride - I am guessing about 50 km - on the flat mountain-top, the road snakes off and steeply works it way down to the valley floor. The views are incredible, looking both down and back up. The descent also features the worst section of road of the day, including single track, mud flows, and rock slides. I nearly dropped the bike a couple of times - that would have been ugly.

At the bottom, you are back in a scorching hot furnace as the road winds through a river valley. I had designated Jesus Maria as my stop-point for the day. When I arrived, it was dark and there were no hotels to be found. No one spoke English, and I had no phone signal. I stopped for a beer. A formation of cowboys rode by on horses. This was "real Mexico". I managed to communicate my predicament to a guy at a hardware store, he directed me to a lady at a shop next door. She managed a hotel that was not open, but she let me stay. A plastic sheet, no running water, and strong sewer and mold smells - but it may as well have been the Four Seasons to me, given the alternative (which didn't exist).

Ride: 307 km / 8 hrs

Stay: Jesus Maria hotel unknown / 200 pesos / *

R2&3: Jesus Maria to Chacala & Puerto Vallarta

On day 2 of the Highway 23 ride, I was not expecting to experience anything of the same high quality as the day before. But man, was I wrong. Leaving Jesus Maria, it was another long climb high above a river valley, and the views just got more and more stunning. One stop is as picture-perfect a scene as I saw anywhere riding in Mexico. This is a challenging back road, quality is not great. But there's very little traffic, making for a stress-free ride. Closer to Ruiz, where things flattened out I had a "incident" with Google Maps, where it directed me off the main road onto what it deemed be a shortcut, which ran down a cobblestone road with a creek flowing over it and a thick layer of slime on the cobblestones - a seriouly bad condition for my big heavy bike to ride on; I went into full gringo mode, ride/walking my bike down the street, past a church full of Sunday relevers. Then it was back onto a major highway to the coast at San Blas. I rode on to Chacala, and due to heavy rains, had to traverse some washed-out sections of highway. I stayed 5 nights in Chacala at a family friend's house, and then rode the 2-hours to Puerto Vallarta for 1 night. This is one of the most visited areas on the west coast of Mexico, and you can see why, as it has a lot to offer.

Ride: 300 km / 9 hours

Map & Route