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I find in deciding to do so that I have become ensnared by the dilemma that all in this trade sooner or later confront: that what makes some places so very special is the public's general ignorance of their existence. And so in all candor, and while it must be in wholesale conflict with whatever principles guide the odious business of travel writing, I have to declare that I simply do not want the general public, despite my warm regard for democracy and prosperity and freedom and such other excellent modern notions, to go there.

Not at all. I want Keep-Out notices posted for miles around, all suggestive finger-posts and hoardings and direction signs taken down, all telephones disconnected, a clutch of moats and ha-has dug, fences of barbed wire, chain-link and chain-mail put up and (since for unexplained reasons in Patagonia there are plenty nearby already) a few minefields strewn, to keep the unwary at bay.

Listen to Simon Winchester talk about his Antarctic journey. (Don't have the RealPlayer 7? Download it for free.)

Not, however, that I want absolutely everyone to be ignorant of the place -- if I wanted that, I wouldn't be writing about it at all. But I am sure I'm not alone in thinking that the only people whom we want to turn up in those special places that we discover serendipitously, are people who are more or less -- to put it bluntly -- like us. The common herd may come and go as it pleases, but only our friends, or people whom we are sure we would like to be our friends, should come. The mines and the ha-has are for keeping out the herd -- the rest we cordially invite, to enjoy what I and my two companions have lately found so transporting a delight.

So within the following sentences I have buried clues, a modest sufficiency of pointers that are neither too obscure nor too cryptic, from which I trust some substantial percentage who have not yet tired of this preamble may be able to work out most of the unstated elements of the story. The correct answer -- the exact name of the place, which is to be found on any good map -- can be e-mailed to my esteemed Salon editor,who will in turn send full details of the hotel to readers who, he and I feel sure, will by virtue of having taken the trouble to solve the little mystery be like-minded enough to go off and help keep this demi-paradise in business.

The hotel is in Patagonia, as I have mentioned. I first heard about it from a young Canadian whom I had met in the Antarctic. It was an old Scottish-built ranch, he said, set in splendid countryside; it had big old rooms and fireplaces and the best of food and wine, and there was plenty to do -- fishing, riding, playing gaucho, pretending to be a Patagonian estancia-worker. He gave me directions: I was simply to drive up the main road from the docks, Route 9, until I spotted the 135-kilometer marker post. A few yards after that, just before a small bridge, there was a dirt road on the left. The estancia was half a mile down the road; it would be impossible to miss.

Next page | A fate of eternal enslavement to this magic place