El Vaquero

Los Cabos. In Mexico, the beaches are all federal property. They may be hard to get to, where hotels and resorts line the coast, but they are free and open to all. Our resort abutted a broad dry wash, a common sight in Baja. I'm told that annual rainfall is received in only one or a few days per year, mostly ensuring sunny skies for touristas, but leaving rutted gullies in the parched earth. This wash was unbuildable and public, so it was a popular beach access for locals, including merchants working the boundaries of the resorts with armfuls of colorful skirts, scarves and pottery. There was a truck that pulled in each day with a trailer full of horses, and the cowboys saddled them up, hopped on the lead horse, tied each horse to the saddle horn of the one before, then trotted to a strategic spot in front of a resort to offer horseback riding on the beach. They would come in the morning and evening, wait for an hour or two for any takers, and haul back out again. I was captivated by these images of the cowboys on the beach with their horses; I could spend an entire trip photographing them. Maybe, next time, I will.