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Portuguese syllables were new to me.
    He started walking down the corridor then turned.
    â€œAlportel, not Albufeira,” he called back. “You don’t want to go there.”
    â€œDon’t worry, I won’t!” I sang out. Then he was gone.
    Chris was his name. Chris who?
    Now the roads have turned into glossy cobblestones, and Brenda and I must drive slowly. The village of Santa Margarita turns out to be nothing more than a cluster of whitewashed houses and one church, perched on the saddle between a pair of mountains. We find the Rua Dos Corralloes (where there actually is a corral, with two grey horses). The lane narrows between high white walls until it is barely wider than my car mirrors, and we arrive at my casita for one.
    Not bad, I think, for an Internet stab in the dark: a pretty white house like the others in the village,with dark green shutters and a scalloped, orange-tiled roof. The familiar rooster-shaped weather vane. Brenda hands over the keys and drives off—rather quickly, I notice, as if I might change my mind and race back to the airport. I suppose it is odd, a middle-aged woman on her own holed up here in March, before the blossoms are out. The place has the sequestered aspect I remember from my first time in the Algarve, with the houses facing inward to walled courtyards. As if winds and hot sun are bad spirits.
    I stand in the driveway and look south over a gentle green slope of orchards, still tight-budded, across broad scrubby plains to a thin, silver line flashing on the horizon—the sea. The owners,who live in the apartment across the courtyard, don’t seem to be home. An invisible donkey brays, but otherwise it’s silent.
    I jerk my suitcase wheels over the cobblestones and roll it into the bedroom, where the bed is high and puffy. A sizable brown spider scuttles out of the corner, and I accidentally roll over it. Oh dear, bad juju. I bounce on the bed. Here I am, apparently the only tourist on this mountain in southern Portugal, at the end of a cobbled road in off-season. It’s much cooler than I expected.
    Car wheels crunch in the driveway, and I hurry out to meet the owners, a short, energetic East Indian woman and her partner, a shy New Zealander with a snaggle-toothed smile. Bob and Kathy. I like them immediately. They open the shutters and doors of my apartment to let the sun in. What about phones and computers, I quiz them. They do have a computer, but it is dial-up and unreliable. The nearest hotel, a half hour’s drive away, might have an Internet connection for guests, but they aren’t sure. As for telephones, there’s a kiosk in Alte, another half hour beyond the hotel.
    â€œThis is why people come here,”Kathy says, smiling, “to be out of touch.”
    Interestingly, I have travelled to a corner of the developed world where communication with my family will be more problematic than from the smallest village of Mexico.
    Now it’s my son’s turn to find me.
    The next morning, I consider an exploratory tramp around the valley. Little birds are singing in the courtyard. Instead, I drive directly to the neo-Grecian, deserted-looking hotel on the road to Alte. A computer the size of a convection oven sits idle in a spare office, and for a Euro they let me use it. After many pings and gurgles the thing dredges up the Internet, like a squid in a fishing net. I log in and find a fresh email from Casey.
    Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2003 17:11:24 -0500
Subject: Hello from Chiapas
    Yesterday, I played soccer with a bunch of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who referred to me as Canada. “Hey Canada, aqui, aqui!” And not one word about Jesus.
    I am considering buying this Brooklyn dude’s bike and touring gear to bike around Guatemala and Chiapas, but we’ll see. I am in the mountain city of San Cristobal de las Casas now, which is full of tourists, but also is still great and old.
    I have been asked to “Say hi to Comandante