Science fiction short story about mysterious phenomenon caused by alien artifact

Question

Trying to recall a science fiction short story which begins with the protagonist being asked to join a husband and wife team on a trip to South America (IIRC) to investigate a mysterious phenomenon (I think it was a constant, never-ending wind) in some high mountain valley type of locality. The strange phenomenon is discovered to be caused by some kind of alien artifact, I think a miniature black hole or space warp may have been involved.

I am pretty confident this story isn't too old, and that I read it in a "Best SF of the Year" anthology.

Answer 1

This is "Trapalanda" by Charles Sheffield. I read it in The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century, edited by Harry Turtledove with Martin H. Greenberg. I don't have the book, but here is the abstract I wrote for myself after reading it.

A man lived in Patagonia for many years and tried to explore a particularly mysterious area. Now he lives in Europe. A wealthy American man pays this man well to accompany him back down there. The wealthy man says he has a model of weather that works worldwide except for an area of Patagonia which has weird weather patterns. When they get there, they find a device which opens a wormhole to some unknown place far away; the effect on weather is a side effect from slight mistuning of the device (which otherwise works perfectly). The wealthy man and the wife of the other man go through the wormhole; the other man goes partway and turns back, as a result of which he ages several decades in the few minutes it takes him to struggle back to our side. In a week or two he returns to the site to attempt to go through; the result is not part of the story.