Letter from Barrett Cove

In the end we beat the volcano. Terry and Margaret, our house sitters, ran us to Faro airport long before the sparrows woke. Our parting glimpse was of Prickles, his nose under the gate, crying to know why he wasn't coming with us. TAP flew us to Lisbon and Frankfurt. Air Canada took us on to Toronto. The plane was full. The cabin attendants were older women. Ours looked worn from too many flights across the pond. We were grateful for the selection of films on offer.

OUR DESTINATION

The airport Holiday Inn put us up that night. We'd hoped to fly on to Washington the same evening but been advised not to attempt it in the two hours available between flights. Three hours is recommended. Passengers have to clear US immigration and customs before departure, a procedure that entails form-filling, queues and questions on top of the usual security checks.

The next morning we flew to Washington Dulles in a 50-seater Embraer-145 – two seats on the right of the aisle, one on the left. The twang of the single cabin attendant baffled us. We watched the US unfolding beneath the little jet. Barbara's brother, Robbie, and his son, Bevan, were at the airport. Bevan lives in Princeton, New Jersey, a 50 minute train-ride from New York.

His parents had arrived from South Africa several days earlier to join him at the luxurious holiday house he had rented on Chesapeake Bay. This is a vast body of water in a beautiful area east of Washington.

There we spent two lazy days with them. The house offered us every comfort. From the patio a broad lawn ran down to the water and the private jetty. At the end of the jetty a line was attached to the crab basket that Bevan had baited and lowered into the water.

He hauled it up to reveal three of the soft-shelled crabs for which the Bay is known, awaiting consumption. Bevan is very fond of crab. His mother and aunt pleaded for the captives' release. In the event they were set free, which doesn't often happen to Chesapeake Bay crabs.

Onshore, squirrels and birds went about their business. So did a long black snake that we saw worming its way into the shrubs beside the house. We had no idea whether it was venomous and were careful for keep the house door closed.

That evening, the serpent was shrugged off by a visitor, a woman who apologetically interrupted our barbecue, explaining that she was the local census officer and obliged to record the occupants of the house. We sat her down for tea and conversation. Black snakes were common, she reassured us; they kept the vermin down and did no harm.

On the bank beside the jetty a small catamaran was drawn up. We looked on as Bevan and Robbie, both experienced sailors, took the craft out. The gentlest of winds, a mere zephyr, tested their nautical skills as they sought deeper water.

Chesapeake is a maze of bays and inlets whose total shoreline exceeds the length of the west coast of America. It was once, we learned during an excursion from the nearby town of St Michaels, a favourite refuge of pirates, who could vanish into it.

From our excursion boat we had a splendid view of the fine, comfortably-separated houses lining the banks. The average price our guide informed us, was a couple of million dollars. In previous centuries fishing, especially for crabs and oysters, provided a living to people in the area. The craft used by these fishermen were exhibited at the fine maritime museum at St Michaels, along with a host of photos and accoutrements testifying to their hard lives.

With Robbie's help I managed to dismantle and revive my noise-cancelling headphones, which had failed me on the plane because of bad battery contacts. I was delighted to have them working again. They weren't cheap and are very useful. What I didn't manage to do was to get an internet connection via the house wifi link. My computer refused to talk to the router that I could see lit up in our bedroom cupboard. It was a problem that I ran into throughout the trip. I tried fiddling with the configuration – to no avail. Very frustrating!

On day three we squeezed ourselves and our luggage – all five of us – into Bevan's mid- sized Lexus. I sat in front passenger seat in comparative luxury on the strength of my size and fussy back. The three passengers behind me sat clutching their bags.

It was an hour to BWI, an airport serving both Baltimore and Washington, where we saw Robbie and Carol off on a flight to Toronto. (From there they continued to Vancouver, a connection they made by the skin of their teeth because of a security go-slow.)