Recently I swapped sexy, sophisticated San Francisco for a remote Andalucian hamlet. Rather than power walking around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park every morning, I now amble down chestnut and olive covered mountain slopes, seldom encountering another human being. It is what you might call a far cry.

This dramatic lifestyle change came about partly because of nine-eleven. I didn't exactly flee the States but one-way flights to Europe were irresistibly cheap and the untroubled Spanish mountains were beckoning. I had lived on the Costa del Sol long ago so it felt like going home. America had been fun, but a tad too competitive for me. It was dispiriting awakening every morning to the realization that I would never make a good corporate cog. And I never learned to shop. After twelve years in the New World it was time to return to the Old. Apart from the bargain flights, I had a dream to follow that had been gestating for a couple of years.

A vision of a place in Andalucia, Spain's southerlymost province - I am still searching for the word to describe a 5-bedroom family-run "hotel" that offers elegant comfort and delicious dinner-party style meals, personal tours of historical sites and insights into traditional Andalucian culture and much more. A place where people will come to vacation and see how pleasantly less stressful the simpler life is. If a suitably descriptive word occurs to you, please contact me!

The perfect location awaited us; we (my daughter, her 5-year old son, and I) simply had to find it. Our first criterion was it must be affordable; much of the southern Spain, particularly near the coasts, is as expensive as San Francisco and we don't have that sort of money as mentioned above. The second was that the property should be near one of the pueblos blancos, the ancient white villages of Andalucia that reflect Moorish architecture and lifestyle with their high-density living and narrow alleyways. Thirdly, a largish town should be within easy reach. Lastly, and most importantly, the village had to be Spanish and not foreign-dominated. Our anticipated guests expected real Spain, not a watered-down parody.

Hours spent Googling had revealed, I thought, my future home before leaving the States. Genalguacil was a village behind Estepona, close to the coast and the airport, which seemed at first glance highly desirable. We visited it at lunchtime one weekday but found no sign of life - nobody in the streets, no children playing, just the odd mongrel asleep in the sun. The local venta (country restaurants located on the edge of towns) was empty. This was a bad sign. You can walk into any venta in Spain at 2 pm and find the place teeming with workmen enjoying their standard 3-course lunch with wine. This is one of the really civilized aspects of this wild, anarchistic land. We returned to the village a second time, at the hour of the evening paseo or stroll when most Spanish towns are bustling with their residents dressed in their best, but found it still abandoned. The narrow white streets were silent and, when we shushed Eli for raising his voice slightly, we realized we were in the wrong place. This is not what Spain is about - children are accepted as part of life and are never shushed.

There was a lot of art in this village though which was intriguing. On every corner a statue or sculpture, on every wall a mural. We learned that the art was a scheme dreamed up by the village authorities in an effort to promote the town which, like the other white villages, was in danger of becoming a ghost town. Life has never been easy in this part of Andalucia and people have usually had to seek work elsewhere, usually in France or Morocco. The source of lucrative employment is closer now, on the coast, so young people leave and only the older people remain in the villages. The government is providing some incentives but the only sustainable solution is a responsible tourist industry. In this particular village somebody had the bright idea of an art festival every other year. Artists come from all over the world (once from Mexico, they proudly told us), work on a piece for four days, and then donate it to the town. It was innovative and lent a certain charm but sadly we left the town realizing that it was not the paradise we sought. We heard afterwards that foreigners were not particularly welcome so it was as well we turned our attentions elsewhere.