AS IN WAY SOUTH. Just short of my 40th birthday, I told my wife, Beth, I was going to build us a little weekend place in … well, in the, uh, Southern Hemisphere. The deep Southern Hemisphere, actually. New Zealand, maybe. Or Argentina. Possibly Chile. She suggested medication.

I knew this was insane. My friends scoffed. My father-in-law called it "the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard."

But for me, the cabin was as necessary as it was preposterous. Enormously far away, these wide-open lands, which share a lonely vigil in the deepest realms of the world's emptiest hemisphere, had long ago infused me with their clean skies, eerily pure water, and deep forests. I ruled out Chile, which had too much rain and, with apologies, too many Chileans. New Zealand seemed ideal, but a visit on my honeymoon showed me how much the Lord of the Rings effect had changed the country, with every millionaire priced out of Napa planting grapes in Nelson.

Like at all good parties, I was left with my original date: Argentina. A lovely, unstable land, it had dug hooks into me during a hitchhiking trip in 1991. With its dry flatlands and green mountains, cowboys, rambling old cars, and lack of fences, Patagonia seemed at times like Wyoming in 1950. When the Argentine economy collapsed in 2002, the prices also retreated by a few decades. Though far away (two flights, totaling 14 hours, plus a drive), it was still a lot closer than New Zealand, and the time zone—two hours ahead of EST—was close, close enough to stay in touch by telephone and come and go without jet lag. Despite an old-fashioned attachment to crime and the occasional run of five presidents in two weeks, Argentina had infrastructure, people, and wines that were all decent and getting better.

I was looking at northern Patagonia, a far gentler land than Tierra del Fuego, some 700 miles to the south. I wasn't alone in this interest: Everything from Bariloche, an alpine gateway to the forests and parks of the region, south to Esquel was enjoying a real estate boom. My predecessors were Ted Turner, Sylvester Stallone, and Sharon Stone. The Benetton family owned a huge spread outside of Esquel. The flag bearers in this foreign invasion, conservationists Kris and Douglas Tompkins, now have some two million acres in Argentina and Chile.

Big names created big expectations. "I have the perfect place for you," one broker told me over a crackling connection: "15,000 acres, 14 buildings, and 500 head of cattle already on the land." It was "priced to move" at $7 million. I couldn't bear to tell him I'd be happy with half an acre.

In the end, I made the search the old-fashioned way, mano a mano. I flew to Bariloche with Beth, and we worked our way southward in a rental car, poking up gravel roads in the mountains, following tips from hitchhikers or small signs that read, LOT FOR SALE. Near the town of El Bolsón, we saw a 50-acre place—too big for us but considered puny in Patagonia—while another lot, near the sensitive border with Chile, was forbidden to foreigners. Price depended on amenities. A hundred acres in the dry, windswept flatlands where the Benettons grazed sheep came cheap. But two acres on a trout-packed river, lined with willows, in a perfect green valley near Cholila were offered up at a price that made even the toothless old cowboy saying it giggle. May Ted Turner find and bless him.

Finally, we ran out of pavement in Trevelín, a kind of Argentine Bozeman near Los Alerces National Park. We sat beside a gray-haired Argentine couple at dinner. At the mention of the word cabin, they looked up.

"We have more land than we can farm," the woman said. Successful in the fruit and alfalfa business, they had picked up neighboring plots cheap over the years. With prices for land and everything else rising, they were looking to raise some cash. "Come have a look tomorrow," the husband said.

We drove two miles up a dirt road, into the foothills of the Andes, and walked the parcel. It was on a mild slope overlooking a valley, thickly for­ested with young ponderosa and Or­egon pines, with deep grass in the clearings, a few apple trees, and a flock of colorful Pata-gonian parakeets burst­ing through the trees. It was miles from electricity. The only water was a rivulet, fouled by cows. At ten acres, it was twice the size I wanted, and at $40,000 it was twice what I had in the bank.

My wife is tolerant, in a long-range way. The plan was absurd, she reminded me. But Beth knew there was something deeper than the rational at work in me. She loved the view over the valley. And the Argentines were fun, she agreed: "The joie de vivre you only get in a place that survived military dictatorship."

"Just buy it," she finally said, shaking her head.

Easier said than done, alas. I had only half the money I needed. I called up Tim, my old colleague in cabin dreams. New Zealand was now in Patagonia, I told him. Before I could even spit out a plan to go 50-50, he blurted out, "Yes." As long as there was room to store his kayak, he didn't care about design—and became my silent partner when matching funds arrived a week later.

The actual purchase was held up nine months by paperwork, bilingual wrangling, and lost wire transfers. All of which was merely prologue. Eventually, when I was high in the mountains of Lebanon, interviewing a warlord, the fax in my old Ottoman hotel ground out the news that a small piece of quiet was mine.