THE LAST COW BOYS

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 specialises 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.

We drop into a dried creek, the silt-choked engine groaning in complaint. As punishing as the drive is, this is exactly what I’ve come for: a parallel universe beyond the reach of modern comforts and reliable internet. In the summer of 2017, after spending the better part of a decade in California, my then-pregnant wife and I packed our truck on a whim and struck out for Baja at the height of summer, in search of simpler living and solitude. We found it in a Pacific beach town called Todos Santos, near the peninsula’s southern tip. We bought some land near the ocean, had two