TRAVELING in style : Basking in Genealogy : A search for roots goes astray as our intrepid correspondent and his spouse acquaint themselves with Santa Lucia (five times) and explore the happy hamlets of the Pyrenees.

History is filled with the efforts of those who have braved the unknown in search of new lands, new oceans, new ideas and ultimately new peoples. Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo come to mind. OK, Charles Kuralt too.

Let me make clear, however, that even had I lived during the Age of Exploration, I would not have been found at the helm of a sailing ship riding the rolling seas in search of India or struggling through a Peruvian jungle looking for souls to save. If where I planned to go didn’t offer reasonably pleasant accommodations en route and at least a four-star hotel upon arrival, I wouldn’t have gone. I feel the same about traveling today.

I realize this sets me apart from a growing trend. An increasing number of back-packing teen-agers and old people barely able to walk march bravely through Europe, Asia and Africa every year, bursting with the kind of high spirit that must have motivated the early explorers. I say let them.

I am perfectly content to view the world from a revolving cocktail lounge atop the Hyatt Regency and ponder from a distance the travails of an adventure-seeking populace.

Given such limitations of spirit, I couldn’t believe it was me driving in endless circles around the piazzas of Italy, guiding a rented car through streets of France too narrow for bicycles, and maneuvering across perilous, rain-slicked bridges that spanned deep gorges in Spain’s Pyrenees.

How did that happen, you ask? I’ll tell you. We were looking for our roots.

First, allow me to introduce my wife, the former Joanne Cinelli. In a less repressive era, she would have been aboard the Pinta, the Nina or the Santa Maria, calling upon the terrified crews to sail on, despite their fear of oblivion at the edge of the plate-shaped Earth. Trust me when I say the woman has incredible energy and insurmountable spunk. She probably should have married Jacques Costeau.

I describe her indomitable love of adventure to explain how we happened to have driven 4,000 miles through Italy, France and Spain last autumn, when only a few weeks before I swore that the most adventuresome I would ever get on any trip would be to take a subway in a foreign land, and only then if the taxis were being driven by known serial killers.

I’m not sure when we began talking about meandering through Europe. I only recall I said firmly and in a tone not intended to tempt debate that I would absolutely never drive in a foreign land in any manner of vehicle. Period. I won’t even drive in Cleveland.

The next thing I knew I was pulling away from Milan’s international airport in a car I had never driven before, looking for a hotel I had never heard of on a street that didn’t exist, with Cinelli saying, “Isn’t this great?”

What had finally broken my resistance came on a day I was stretched out on the couch in my underwear watching a football game. She stood over me for a moment and then said in a tone meant to convey irony, “Alex Haley would be proud.”

Haley is an old friend who badgered me for years after he wrote “Roots” to trace my own genealogy. “You know,” he said once, “the Portuguese were slave traders. Maybe your ancestors sold mine.”

When I said I wasn’t Portuguese, he looked at me doubtfully and asked, “Well then, what are you?” Listen up, Alex.

My father was cholo Mexican who learned to drink and fight on the streets of Guadalajara. My mother’s family was from the Basque coast of Spain. Her great-grandfather was Alfonso Larragoite, the first of the Basques to journey to America.

Cinelli’s father was born in a village of northern Italy called Santa Lucia, and it was her contention that we ought to at least see where our souls would rest when the end came.

“Also,” she said, “wouldn’t you like a nice, chilled martini at Harry’s Bar and American Grill in Venice and maybe Florence? Close your eyes and dream along with me. I see a frosted glass . . .”

That argument got us started on a free-floating odyssey that included a sort of search for her Italian and my Basque roots, and a quest for the perfect martini. I found the martinis at Harry’s, but we were less successful in the search for the places were our souls would rest.

To begin with, we discovered there are 38 Santa Lucias in northern Italy alone, and Cinelli’s father, Augustus, had not communicated to her precisely which Santa Lucia he had left at age 11. My wife is no wilting lily when it comes to asking questions, however, and in the five Santa Lucias we visited, she managed to convey what she was seeking.

At times, whole families of Italians gathered around us in an effort to figure out what it was the Americans wanted. A European phrase book helped very little, since there was no single phrase I could find that encompassed a search for roots. The best I could come up with was “How long have you been here?” ( Da quanto tempo e qui? ) and “May I introduce Miss Phillips?” ( Posso presentarie la signorina Phillips? ) Neither phrase, of course, would do.

“I guess we won’t have time to visit the other 33 villages,” Cinelli said as we drove away from the fifth Santa Lucia. I froze. There was that look in her eyes. She was thinking, “But maybe if we hurried . . .”

“Naw,” she finally said, “on to the Basque Country.”

Generally, I was looking for a Larragoite which, as I said, was my mother’s maiden name. I am forced to admit that my quest had less than Alex Haley’s enthusiasm, because the more we drove the more I was beginning to enjoy simply being there, generally lessening my interest in whatever antecedents had preceded me on this treadmill called life.

While our daily adventures were far less jeopardizing than those, say, of Vasco da Gama, it wasn’t always easy finding the kind of hotel I deemed acceptable. I’m sure Vasco had the same problem. We played it by ear every night, with Cinelli navigating us on the autostradas and the back roads, where we mingled with the people as often as possible, toward what end I’m not sure.

Not all of the hotels were four-star and some were even two-star, but they were all what we Americans call charming, which is to say quaint, clean and cheap. Part of our mingling included eating where the real people ate. Not at restaurants listed in guidebooks, but in little places on dark streets where Americans rarely set foot. This was especially true in a small restaurant in southern France called Cassoulet, which is also the name of a Basque stew.

It was in Toulouse, which calls itself the Gateway to the Basque Country. There are several claimed gateways, a requirement for which appeared to be an abundance of shops that sell berets. I didn’t buy one. They all seemed to be worn by old men who walked around with their flies half-zippered, and I’ll be damned if I was about to join that crowd.

We ordered the cassoulet because Cinelli felt I might like an introduction to the kinds of chow my ancestors thrived on, other than tacos and refried beans. What the Basque stew consists of doesn’t sound ominous: white beans, garlic, pork, mutton, sausage and bits of goose or duck. I’ll eat any of those things. My only restriction is that what I eat must be dead. In Rome once, I was served clams that cringed when lemon was squeezed on them. I don’t eat things that cringe.

The waiter, a sour little man named Leo, discovered I was part Basque and insisted on bringing us a Basque favorite, chiperones . I said sure, what the hell, but what he brought turned out to be squid in its own ink. Add to the list of food I won’t eat anything served in its own ink, whether it is squid or a daily newspaper. Chiperones looks very much like spiders in a soupy mud.

“It’s not so bad,” Cinelli said, tasting it. “Just close your eyes and imagine it’s . . . well . . .imagine it’s . . .” She shrugged. “I can’t imagine what else it could be.”

I sent mine back. Leo seemed disappointed but promised we would enjoy the cassoulet. “It keeps the sheep herders warm on cold winter nights,” he said. “You will like this very much.”

Once more, Leo was wrong. The mutton skin still had bristles of hair on it, and while the sheep herders may have indeed been warmed by the bristled collation, I was left cold. Cinelli had ordered chicken, which she generously shared with me. Thank God, it was featherless.

Our next stop was Lourdes, another Gateway to the Basque Country.

The city where Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary in a vision has turned into a kind of ecumenical junkyard. Like the commercial success of Graceland, where the ghost of Elvis Presley abides, spiritualism means big bucks. Gift shops are a growth industry in one of Catholicism’s most sacred cities. Proprietors hawk their heavenly trinkets along the Rue de la Grotte like carnival pitchmen calling you to see a two-headed snake.

I got sick in Lourdes. It was a 12-hour stomach upset that kept me from dinner that night. As we drove away the next day, Cinelli said, “Why is it that in a city where lepers are made whole, you get sick?”

I had no answer.

We arrived at Spain’s Basque Coast in the rain. Here, at last, hard by the Atlantic, was the place of my ancestors. Even street and city signs were in Basque as well as in Spanish. Now I could begin asking about Larragoites. For those who know little about the Basques, they are traced through the pre-Christian era of Europe to tribes in northern Spain and western France. The origin of their language remains a mystery. Over the centuries, they have resisted the Visigoths, the Franks, the Normans, the Moors and they are still resisting the Spanish, which will give you some idea from whose roots I draw my churlish nature.

At the risk of jeopardizing a sour reputation, I liked the Basque country. At least partially responsible for that was the luxurious, five-star Maria Cristina Hotel which, while it might have lacked the charm and economy of a pension in Italy, did offer the kind of luxury we were ready for after 3,000 miles on the road. We were in San Sebastian, a real Gateway to the Basque Country (or the Basque Euskardi ), a city that somehow manages to embrace both Gothic cathedrals and modern high-rises with equal grace.

The Basques have always been farmers, sheep herders, ship-builders and fishermen, and all of these traditions were evident as we wandered the narrow, cobblestoned streets of San Sebastian’s Old Town looking for a Larragoite, much as Diogenes sought an honest man. No Larragoites were listed in the city’s telephone directory, but an English-speaking, elaborately-uniformed doorman at the Maria Cristina suggested we “ask around.”

That sounded reasonable, though less than scientific. Had Alex Haley simply wandered through West Africa “asking around,” I’m sure he never would have come up with Kunta Kinte. But Haley had 12 years and we only had a remaining week to locate any European heirs of Alfonso Larragoite.

This took us not only through San Sebastian and its environs, but into the Pyrenees on a twisting mountain road to a village called Lesaca, about 40 kilometers north of Pamplona, where the bulls run. I, of course, objected that such a trip would be perilous and no doubt useless, but Cinelli said we’d see Lesaca if she had to drag me there by my orejas . That means ears, but I’m sure she would have dragged me there by any other available protrusion.

I’m glad we went.

Lesaca emerged from a misty rain like Broadway’s hamlet of Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish village that appeared for only one day every 100 years. There was a magical quality to this village trapped in time: narrow roads, brick and adobe buildings, verandas draped with colorful fall flowers, stone walls, women in bright colors and men who wore their berets like they were born in them. Their flies, I am pleased to report, were tightly zippered.

Up until we reached Lesaca, we had asked about the name Larragoite without success. We visited a government building, a library, several excellent restaurants that served their beef dead and hairless (I got to really like Basque food), and a number of tabernas which, while they produced no information relative to my past, did provide booze, music and brotherhood.

I had almost decided that the Larragoites of Basqueland, like the Cinellis of Santa Lucia, would have to wait for another time to be discovered by the Martinezes of L.A. when, in a taberna of Lesaca, a miracle occurred.

A patron who heard us talking said something in Spanish, which included the word Larragoite. Then he pointed to an old dog sitting in the middle of the room.

“The dog’s name is Larragoite?” I asked.

The man, puzzled, smiled and half-nodded.

I turned to Cinelli. “I may be part beagle.”

“I’m not sure that’s what he’s saying,” she replied, “but if it is, there’s no reason to be ashamed. He’s a very fine dog.”

Interpreters seem to exist in every friendly town, and Lesaca was no exception. Another patron explained that the dog was not a Larragoite but was owned by a man named Claudio Larragoite who lived in the mountains at the end of a dirt road. While Claudio was rarely seen, the dog visited frequently. Urged on by Columbus’ spiritual heir, which is to say my wife, we slid and fishtailed up the dirt road to its very end, stopping occasionally to ask passers-by if they knew of one Claudio Larragoite. They did not.

I wish I could say we at least glimpsed a Larragoite running naked through the woods like a Basque version of Bigfoot, but we didn’t. While on sunnier days Cinelli would have led me through the forest calling Claudio’s name, it was beginning to rain harder. There was a real danger that our dirt road might be washed out, so we reluctantly turned back. That is to say, she was reluctant. I was perfectly happy to be on a paved highway again, though the little town of Lesaca rests gently in my memory.

As we drove off, we noticed the old dog from the taberna trotting toward the mountains in the rain. Cinelli opened the car window and called to it, “Say hello to Cousin Claudio!”

Sorry we missed him.