Mexico 1 zigzags back and forth across the peninsula, connecting the biggest communities like a lace on a boot, occasionally running straight along a coast but mostly just aiming diagonally from town to town. There are a few other highways up near the border, a few spurs, and a loop at the end, but the Transpeninsular is basically it, a lone ribbon of scabrous asphalt connecting north to south.

The road’s completion in 1973 brought a measure of predictability and tameness to the journey, but not much: In most places, the peninsula is just as primitive as when Spanish sailors first landed in 1533, thinking they’d arrived on the island of Califia, home to a tribe of giant warrior women and their troves of precious metals. Oh, to be sure, the two ends–the border strip and Los Cabos–teem with people and commerce. Cabo’s tourism growth has been shocking, with a seemingly endless string of luxury resorts guarding its beaches, vast stretches of golf courses, and a culture that supports everything from high-end jewelry stores to a bar owned by Van Halen, but that’s due more to the arrival of shining 737s than a thousand-mile stretch of pavement. Despite the growth, despite the road, the vast stretches between Tijuana and Cabo are still empty, rugged, traditionally Mexican, and somewhat lawless. If you’re self-reliant, this can be liberating, but there’s little in the way of safety nets. Credit cards are pointless outside the cities, and throughout most of the land a cell phone is about as useful as a feather boa. It’s no accident that the Baja license plate says “frontera” (frontier). Whether that’s a boast, apology, or warning, I don’t know.

A day into our trip we find ourselves in a long, flat stretch of desert. Joshua trees guard the road and lean toward the south, as if they, too, want to know what’s at Land’s End. Up ahead we see a gaggle of soldiers and a military barracks. Unlike the checkpoints we’ve already encountered–forlorn little bunkers manned by post-adolescent Army recruits–this is a permanent facility, and the policia are serious and tough-looking. The commander is stonefaced, at least until the men searching our truck open the cooler.

“Tienes Red Bull?” he asks, a grin on his face. You have Red Bull?

“Le gusta, senor?” You like?

“Si si si. Me gusta mucho,”

I dig around in the ice, pull a cold, dripping can out of the cooler.

Sinuhe psssts at me. “Dude! What are you doing? That stuff is precious. We’re gonna run out.”

“It’s OK, man. Share the wealth. Think of it as karma.”

The captain cracks open the Red Bull and waves his men away from the truck. He gestures toward the open road. “Adios, amigos.”

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