Cotton Walters is a young American expatriate hiding out on the Mexican west coast in 1972. An ex-student, ex-political activist with uncertain draft status and pending legal problems, he has lived incognito for over a years along a tropical frontier of fishing villages and empty beaches, thriving on cantina life, beachcombing, bodysurfing, jungle slumming, and playing second base a local village baseball team. He's an illeagal gringo alien, living a lazy village life and known to his cantina buddies as Algo – "Something", in English. Armed with a little Spanish and a passion for the Mexican coastal culture, he is a disillusioned dropout, waiting for the rest of the world to regain some sanity.