Jesse caught up with me by the water's edge. "So, why'd we stop here?" he asked.

"No reason."

We got back in the car and continued north along the coast. Jesse had a plastic bag full of powdery Mexican chocolate and pods of tamarindo. We ate the sticky cinnamon-colored fruit and dropped the glossy mahogany seeds into the change tray between us.

North of Jalisco, we came to a town I'll call Sarta. A surfer from San Francisco had told me about the place. It was a perfect coastal refuge: four or five streets, a couple of hotels, some vendors stalls near the zocalo, or town square, and a serenity rarely found in northern villages

We set up in a motor court called Las Gaviotas, the Seagulls, a cinder block building painted sunny yellow with dark green trim. All of the rooms face a central courtyard where laundry was strung between mango and ailanthus trees and the only other guests were two 50ish longboarders from Santa Cruz.

That afternoon Jesse took the car to run an errand and I grabbed my board and headed for the water. Whatever else you might say about Sarta, it was a Valhalla for boys who'd grown old. In the gentle reef break off the town beach I met a dozen other guys who were surfing through their midlife crises on a wave where bald spots and longboards were the rule.

Jesse and I reconvened over fish tacos and a few beers at a restaurant on the beach that night.

He was telling me about his latest theory. Jesse had a lot of theories.

"You have to be open to getting the excess love that there is in the world," Jesse explained. "People who are not willing to risk everything don't really experience the places they visit." I nodded, wondering if the surfboards I had left in the hotel room would be alright.

We walked back through town to where a carnival had set up near the zocalo. Little toy cars and rocket ships orbited one carousel. Another had benches that rose and fell around the hub, whirring and clanking under a garland of yellow fluorescent lights, making an entropic music of worn metal and loose bolts.

Back at our room, I opened a bottle of cheap tequila and had a few shots.

Jesse, bored, decided it was time for a fire show. On this trip Jesse made food money by selling handmade jewelry and putting on fire shows. In these demonstrations the performer twirls and tosses a four-foot-long wooden staff while both ends are alight. The shows, which are given at night for maximum effect, have a mesmeric quality to them that belies their danger.

It was then I recalled something else about Jesse: I had seen him do this show before, in Palenque, and he nearly set a building on fire.

The beach was obviously the safest place for this spectacle. We found a spot where one of the town's roads ended in a flight of stone steps on the sand and Jesse conscripted a bunch of local kids to collect plastic cups and matches.

With his staff dipped in the gas-filled cups, Jesse lit the ends of the stick and began twirling. The flames made no reflection on the black Pacific. Even the light of the stars winking on overhead was absorbed by the dark sea. The steps soon filled with a crowd of curious villagers.

Nearby, the local carnies had set up a portable Karoke booth complete with enormous speakers and cue cards with lyrics written out in felt-tipped pen. As Jesse began his second act, spinning blue circles and orange figure-8s of flame around his naked torso, a young drunk stepped up to the microphone to slur a version of Credence Clearwater Revival's faux folk hit "Them Old Cotton Fields Back Home". Although my home is in Brooklyn, I sang along, nostalgic for a place I had never been.

The next morning at dawn I drove Jesse back out to Route 200. He planned to catch a bus to a train that would let him off two days later in Tijuana. From there, Jesse would take another bus over the border and hitch home. I wished him a safe journey and extended my hand.

"Thanks, man," Jesse said, ignoring the hand and wrapping me in an awkward bear hug. "Thanks for everything. Hey this is for you." Jesse gave me a string of tiny shells and tamarindo seeds tied to a feather. "It's a wave catcher."

On the beach that morning a quartet of fishermen were readying their boat for the day's outing. They loaded their nets, a spare can of gas, floats and bait into the open boat before dragging it to the water. On a berm of sand, they pivoted the bow toward the ocean. With half the panga afloat and the stern still on the sand, one of the fishermen cranked the big outboard motor and ran it for a minute. Once the engine was warmed up, he cut it and the men stood, waiting for a lull in the surf. When it came, they pushed the boat through the first line of foam, yanked the motor to life and took off at an angle across the bay.

When the boat had receded to a colorful splash on the sea and the sound of its engine diminished to a beelike hum, I carried my board to the water. It was still cool on the sand, in the shadow of the trees, but midway to the lineup I paddled into the sunlight and felt its warmth on my back.

The ironic thing about surfing is that the more waves you catch, the less there is to say. It's the feeling you remember, a handful of electric moments and an abiding peace that settles into your bones. What I remember about that morning is the mist, which steamed off the hills and billowed out over the bay, and the color of the water - a clear blue, lighter than cobalt, not quite sapphire. And I remember one wave: the sudden acceleration as I dropped from its crest; the rippling sound the board made as it sliced its azure face; and the tremendous force of the thing as it pushed toward shore.

At the corner of Sarta's town square is a café with a few tables and chairs scattered under the awning outside the shop and an informal lending library of week-old American newspapers and trashy novels. I'd taken the habit of visiting the café after my morning surf.

Good, strong coffee is almost unknown in Mexico. Although some of the world's best beans are grown here, the locals are chary with the stuff -- perhaps because they know what it costs to produce -- and the best that you can expect in a Mexican cantina is a watery brew with a bit of cinnamon stirred in. So it is left to the gringos to make the strong coffee, and where it is served you can find other gringos gathered like finches around a stream.

There is a crippled green parrot at the cafe that waits beside the tables for scraps. It pulls it's body through the dust by craning its neck and then planting its beak in the dirt and pulling its body forward like an inchworm.

I found a copy of USA Today -- "Tomorrow, the world" -- in the cafe's stack of papers and settled down with my coffee to read it. It doesn't matter that the papers are old. The news is always the same. There is a war; there's going to be a war; there's a new diet, fad, pop group; there's a scandal in Washington; business is bad/good and consumer confidence is slipping. The genius of USA Today is that it includes snippets of local news from each of the 50 states. For instance, from this issue I learned that the body of a college boy, who had been missing in Portland, Maine since New Year's Eve, was found behind a bar where he had apparently passed out and froze.

Most mornings at the café were busy. The tables under the awning filled and a few more were set out in the sun. The talk was of real estate and the rumored south swell. This little ranchero town was changing fast as North Americans rushed to buy a piece of the paradise. It was tempting. I had stopped by a real estate agency and learned that I could purchase a grand beachfront hacienda for a bit less than I paid for my tiny co-op in Brooklyn.

The café was a fine place to sit and watch the town wake up. Each morning the vendors stalls on the zocalo that sell everything from plastic curlers and to playing cards with pictures of topless women on the back, roll up their canvas shutters. Each morning the men of the town trudge to work with their tools and a clutch of ladies gossip in the shady square while they await the arrival of the bus to the city.

Eventually the bus does come, a 30-year-old leviathan of blue paint and sparkling chrome with the name of its destination written in soap on the inside of the windshield. The ladies watch the new arrivals step from the bus and paste kisses on their friends who will go to the city, nearly two hours away by the coast road. A gaggle of sunburned tourists gets on carrying grips and fat detective novels; a few get off to stand blinking in the sunlight. The engine rumbles to life, the last passengers board and the old bus wheezes off down the main street.

I did drive as far as San Blas, but I came back to Sarta. The surf was better there and the routine suited me. I surfed when the sun came up, drank my coffee by the town square, read in some shady spot through the heat of the day and took long walks in the late afternoon.

Weeks before, in the Yucatan, I had traded my digital watch for a straw hat and swapped my allegiance to the hours for that of the days. It was working a slow change on me - the satisfying monotony of the routine, the daily hunt for waves, and the sunlit days themselves.

The town's cemetery sits on a hilltop overlooking the bay. Some afternoons I would go there to look at the brightly painted tombs and stare out over the Pacific for signs of an incoming swell. There was a young woman who also came to the burial ground each afternoon. She always wore a clean blouse and carried a boombox. Most days she brought fresh flowers as well.

Her ritual of fealty and grieving never varied: she placed the boombox on the ground beside the grave and the flowers near the stone and then she sang. Perhaps she was singing her prayers for a beloved parent, or calling to a husband who had died too young. It was hard to tell; there are so many ways to say goodbye.

Sarta is too small for a regular post office, so a local woman collects letters and issues stamps from her trim, green cottage on the hillside. I have to ask directions twice to find the place before I set out up a sandy alleyway, scattering dogs and children, past the three casas until I find the little green house nearly usurped by bougainvillea.

I knock at the door, but no one answers. A boy of about 12 with bright eyes is descending the steps with a handful of letters. I ask him in my busted Spanish if there is a letterbox nearby. No. Is this the post office? Yes, but it is closed. He starts to elaborate, but seeing my dumb incomprehension, he raises his thumb and forefinger, as if showing me an invisible marble. "Momentito," he says and disappears around the back of the house.

He returns with a formidable looking senora with silver hair and gold bridgework. I repeat my idiotic questions and she looks at me for a moment, perhaps wondering who has sent her this babbling foreigner. My tourist's Spanish doesn't stray far from the objects of commerce and asking for what is not immediately at hand. She explains something slowly in Spanish, which I don't understand. I want to tell her how important this letter is, but I don't have the words. Instead I ask feebly, "Manana?" She shakes her head.

Finally she says "Yo es correa" -- 'I am the post' -- with an air of such implacable assurance that I hand over the letters with my profuse thanks.

At another graveyard, set into the jungle on a back road a few miles south of Sarta, I stopped to look at the stones. Mexicans don't just bury their dead, they enshrine them. The poorest farmer is sure to have his final resting place marked by saints and flowers, miniature churches and weeping Madonnas. But the most eloquent gravemarker belonged to a Yankee. Nailed to a tree beside the graveyard was a hand-painted sign. This is what it said: "In memory of Billy Vega, 1948-1997, Friend, Musician, Surfer. He loved it here.

In his book, "An Intimate History of Humanity," Theodore Zeldin said that people become free when they arrive at a place in their lives where nothing is expected of them. This is why travelers feel free.

Billy Vega found his freedom here.