THE LAST COWBOYS

Remote ranches, sun-bleached mission towns and prehistoric rock art amid soaring mesas: the sierras of southern Baja California are legendary for their scenery. A road trip to visit the Mexican cowboys that eke a living from this arid land reveals traditions that have changed little in centuries, and a way of life that’s hanging by a thread

- JASON MOTLAGH

SOMEWHERE NEAR ROAD MARKER 101, A BEER CAN DANGLING FROM A WISP OF OCOTILLO CACTUS INDICATES IT’S TIME TO TURN OFF BAJA CALIFORNIA’S TRANSPENINSULAR HIGHWAY.

The side road, if one can call it that, is a faintly discernible skein of dirt track and crumbling rock that rattles the brain and tests the mettle of our rented Jeep Wrangler. “The ranch is right up on that ridge, to the left of El Batequi,” says Trudi Angell, pointing to a lone peak that thrusts into the cloudless horizon. She’s the founder of Loreto-based Saddling South, an outfit that specializes in mule pack trips, and my guide to the Sierra de San Francisco mountains. I shift into four-wheel drive, and we rumble past giant cactuses, sun-bleached cattle carcasses, and rock art that dates back thousands of years. Such a landscape anywhere else would draw crowds. Out here, in the central badlands of Mexico’s dangling, northwesterly peninsula, there’s no one in sight.