We spent the last week in Banff in Alberta, Canada to celebrate Greg’s 60th birthday as well as Mrs. V’s 30th.  We split our time between skiing at Sunshine Village in Banff and Lake Louise, dog-sledding in Canmore, hiking to icefalls in Johnston Canyon and a little shopping here and there too.  (Mouse-over each image for a description.)

Banff

We found our house in Banff on Vacation Rentals By Owner. choosing VRBO.com after the fantastic experience we had when we visited Sedona last year.  We weren’t disappointed this time: our abode for the week was a four-bedroom house three blocks from the center of downtown Banff, on the corner of Caribou and Otter Streets.  We couldn’t have asked for a better location, minutes on foot from all the ski shops, bakeries, clothing stores and souvenir nooks.  Canadians sure have it sorted when it comes to food: bakeries with meat pies and sausage rolls, as well as gravy on French fries!  We ended up eating in quite a bit, but did experience the local fare a little, enjoying elk burgers one night at Wild Bill’s Saloon on Banff Avenue as well as the famous Grizzly House.

The kids skied for four of the six full days we spent in the Canadian Rockies.  For the birthday celebrations on our final evening in Banff we ate at the famous Grizzly House on Banff Avenue.  The Grizzly House gives a distinctly Canadian spin on fondue: our group ordered three servings of the local Alberta Fondue, which consisted of choice cuts of musk ox, beef, buffalo, elk and venison.  Given the choice of oil or hot rocks on which to cook our food, we all opted for hot rocks and enjoyed cooking our meat on sizzling slabs of granite located in the middle of our table.  A great time, even Hunter Luke was impressed with the quality of meat delivered for our dinner.

Sunshine Village

Banff has a small mountain, Mount Norquay, within a few minutes of downtown.  The largest resort close to Banff, however, is about 20 minutes drive from downtown and is called Sunshine Village.  We spent a couple of days skiing at Sunshine, and while the snow wasn’t the waist-deep powder the locals told us they’re usually blessed with at this time of year, we had a great time exploring the slopes.  We were lucky to score a few centimeters of fresh snow the first day we skied Sunshine and managed to put in around 21,000 vertical feet on each of the days we skied at Sunshine.

The Continental Divide Express chairlift, pictured here to the left, runs right along the ridge of the Continental Divide.  It happens that the chair also coincides with the border between British Columbia and Alberta; there’s signs on certain chairlift poles stating “Welcome to Alberta” and “Welcome to British Columbia” as the chair snakes across the border between the neighboring states.  The views from the top of Continental Divide Express chair were absolutely breathtaking.  We spent most of our time at Sunshine split between Continental Divide Express and Goat’s Eye Express on opposite sides of the resort.  While there wasn’t quite enough snow to have the super steep areas of the resort open when we were there (Silver City and Delirium Dive), you could see the entrance to both from the top of the Continental Divide Express chairlift.  It is the only in-bounds area of a ski resort I’ve ever seen that actually requires skiers to carry an avalanche transceiver beacon to ski the double blacks contained therein!

Lake Louise

Ever since I was a little tacker I’ve wanted to ski at Lake Louise, the mountain has always been up on a pedestal for me, so it was awesome to be able to ski a couple of days at Lake Louise during our stay in the Rockies.  Lake Louise ski resort is about 45 minutes from Banff along the Trans-Canada Highway.  The resort is on the opposite side of the Bow River Valley from the lake itself (which you can see tucked into the mountains in the center of the photo above).  I thought the views from the top of Sunshine Village were breathtaking, but those from the top of Lake Louise were just something else.  The only other awe-inspiring landscapes that even come close are those in Yosemite National Park and the Chamonix Valley.

Prior to arriving at Lake Louise we had been warned that due to the lack of snow Lake Louise’s front side was very icy.  We thus spent most of our time at Louise in the back bowls.  The snow in the Paradise Bowl was definitely the best we found during our time in the Rockies, great steeps and a lot of fun moguls.  At one point Katrina decided the steeps of the Paradise Bowl weren’t quite challenging enough for us so took Luke and I down an extremely hairy double black called Exit Only located in an area of the mountain called The Ultimate Steeps.  Yes, I was a little worried that a slip of an edge and I’d be bouncing my way to the bottom over an array of boulders!

Canmore

On one of our days off from skiing we took a trip down the Trans-Canada Highway to the next town in the valley, Canmore.  Canmore is just outside the Banff National Park boundary and thus represents more of a regular mountain town rather than the resort-centric Banff.  Our initial motivation for making the trip was to spend the afternoon dog-sledding, but we also discovered an amazing coffee shop in town called The Coffee Mine as well as a fantastic pub, The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company.   I think Luke could have drunk the espresso-infused stout at The Grizzly Paw until he turned into an espresso bean!  If you’re reading this and thinking of visiting Canmore, make sure you visit one or both of these establishments.

Luke, Katrina and I decided to explore the local surrounds whilst the rest of our group spent the afternoon with Snowy Owl dog-sled tours.  We ventured up the mountains toward Spray Lakes, in-between the Kananaskas Range and Goat Range.  We hiked out along the western side of Spray Lakes Reservoir, which happened to be the same path Snowy Owl tours used for their afternoon dog-sled runs, so managed to snap some good shots of our crew sledding.  The groups of six dogs pulled a sled carrying two to three people each, everyone enjoyed the 10 kilometer tour immensely, especially getting to pilot their own sleds.  The girls fell in love with their lead dog Excalibur, pictured below, and Greg was pretty stoked about getting to fulfill his childhood dream of taking a dog-sled ride.

While the rest of our group was getting whisked around Spray Lakes on dog-sleds Luke, Katrina and I hiked down into Banff National Park alongside Goat Creek.  The trail we were on makes its way from the Spray Lakes road all the way down to Banff, meandering its way over 18 kilometers between the Goat Range and Sundance Range.  Would be a fun mountain bike ride during summer!  We also stopped off at the Canmore Nordic Center on the way back to town, where we caught an afternoon cross-country ski race.  No wonder Canada produces so many successful Olympic athletes, with activities like those pictured below for kids to participate in after school.

To finish up our day in Canmore, Luke and Katrina discovered that the Canmore hockey team was playing a game at the local recreation center.  We all went along and were treated to great game (unfortunately the home team lost) with not one, not two, but three hockey brawls to boot.  And the final melee resulted in one of the opposing team being knocked out cold, how fun!  We discovered that all the British seasonal workers in the area for the ski season frequent the Eagles’ home games to act as an unofficial cheering squad.  It was an excellent reminder of the motivation for countries like Australia and Canada distancing themselves from the power of Her Majesty.

Johnston Canyon

On our other day off from skiing Carol took us down the Bow Valley Parkway to Johnston Canyon.  The canyon boasts some famous icefalls which were really a sight to see, we walked the 3.6 mile roundtrip in hiking crampons.  Emerald-colored water and window-like ice made the falls just an amazing experience, the photos don’t do Johnston Canyon justice.  Unfortunately Carol had a tooth abscess giving her a lot of trouble for a couple of days during our stay, but she powered through the pain to make sure she got to experience the icefalls.

It seems to have become a bit of a tradition that we take a trip to Arizona for Cheryl’s birthday each year, this year we didn’t spend our time in Scottsdale but instead Cheryl organized a trip to Sedona for us.  Sedona’s an amazing place, an almost Martian landscape, the color of the soil (due to iron ore) is so vividly red.  Once in the town the horizon is full of mesas and buttes, no cactus in Sedona like the lower elevations down in Phoenix and Scottsdale.

We spent our first afternoon on a 4X4 tour run by a company called Red Rock Jeep Tours.  I think Tom Brown would have been in heaven!  Lefty, our guide, kitted out with a knife that would have made Crocodile Dundee jealous and a real revolver on the other hip, was a wealth of information about the surrounds and history of the area.  We toured up the Soldier Pass Trail in the Coconino National Forest on the northwestern side of Sedona, it was pretty fun, definitely got a good taste of Arizona off-road driving.  The overcast skies didn’t make for the best photos, but got some good snaps all the same.  One of Lefty’s tidbits of information that really stuck with me was his description of the agave (not the type that Tequila comes from) that’s native to the area.  There’s a photo down below; the plant is colloquially known as a “cowboy killer’ because its spines are so stiff and as sharp as a hypodermic needle that cowboys who would fall off their horse onto one of these plants most often would be killed.  We felt the spines and he was right, they’re about as sharp as a needle and very solid.  Supposedly the Native Americans would peel off the spines and use them as a makeshift needle and thread.

 
Brin’s Mesa (left) and Cock’s Comb (right) on the Soldier’s Pass Trail

On the Soldier’s Pass Trail (left), the Seven Sacred Pools with Cock’s Comb in the background (middle), and a shot at the Pools in from of Cock’s Comb with Cheryl and Todd (right)

 
Lefty and Cheryl standing on the ridge of the Devil’s Kitchen sinkhole (left), and an agave plant on the rim of the sinkhole (right)

Jeeping up to the Devil’s Kitchen sinkhole

We also had our first experience with Vacation Rental By Owner; Cheryl found the website and organized a three bedroom house in Oak Creek (the town next to Sedona) for the weekend.  What an awesome find, a beautiful house with a spa and everything else you’d need for less than it would have cost the four of us to stay at a hotel.  Any time there’s more than a single couple on a trip I’m definitely going to be taking a look at VRBO.com before shelling out for a hotel.

We spent Saturday morning on a hike recommended to us by a number of locals, the West Fork Oak Creek Trail about 10 miles north of the town of Sedona.  We got the feeling that the trail was popular amongst the locals because it offered a bit of a respite from the desert-like surrounds of most of Sedona; the trail followed a river up a canyon bordered by huge red rock faces.  But what we were really looking for was some vista views of the red rock buttes endemic to the area, so in the afternoon we took Cheryl’s Santa Fe wheeling down Fire Road 152 for the hike out to Devil’s Arch.  The pictures speak for themselves…

 
Lee Mountain (left) and Courthouse Butte with Lee Mountain in the background (right) on Saturday morning

 
Cathedral Rock and The Nuns (left) and the Bell Rock vortex (right) on Saturday morning

The West Fork Oak Creek Trail

 
Red rock vista on the way back into Sedona from the West For Oak Creek Trail (left) and Devil’s Arch (right)

The four of us atop Devil’s Arch (left), Todd on top of the Arch (middle), and Cheryl and Todd (right)

Our final morning gave us (well me, anyway!) the skies I was after for some landscapes of the Sedona surrounds.  We hiked the first portion of the Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte loop just north of the house we had rented.  Some of the shots below are definitely amongst some of my all-time photography favorites…

Courthouse Butte and Lee Mountain (left), and House Mountain (right)

Courthouse Butte and Lee Mountain (left and right)

The four of us with Lee Mountain in the background

Thanks Cheryl for organizing such an awesome long-weekend.  Wonder where we’ll meet next year?

We ventured Down Under for a couple of weeks for the first time in over two years for me and three years for my better half.  Our trip over was a bit of an ordeal: somehow I got us booked on the Sydney to Adelaide leg of a Sydney to Singapore flight, so for the first time in my life we cleared customs in Adelaide and not Sydney.  Unfortunately our bags were checked to Sydney, so we arrived in Adelaide without any of our bags, wine, or gifts for Mother’s Day (which was the day after we arrived).  And our plane was delayed for three and a half hours, so I missed out on half of the bux show I had aimed to attend.  Ah well, the latter half of the night was still a lot of fun…  Regardless, it was great to spend Mother’s Day with my mum and grandma, don’t get to do that very often these days.  Mum organized quite a feast up in Stirling at my cousin Becca’s new place, still tasting those lamb chops!

Layla, Megan and Andrew at Mother’s Day lunch (left), Layla the Polish woman (middle), and Isabella enjoys a knee (right) 

The mothers with their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren (left) and grandma Rosabelle (right)

We didn’t realize it until we returned home, but we don’t have a single photo of Sam, our host for our time in Adelaide, or his son Jordan!  Terrible form on our part…  However, we do have a shot of Grace from our night at Mark and Mel Rudloff’s beautiful new house in Goodwood.

Mel and Emily (left), Grace and Emily (middle), and me with my grandma before taking he out to lunch (right) 

Dad organized a great day of wine tasting in McLaren Vale during our first week in Adelaide.  We had the chance to visit one of Kendall-Jackson’s properties in the Vale as well as enjoy a fantastic lunch at Woodstock Winery.  TB also toured us around Chapel Hill Winery and Samuel’s Gorge, the former being his employer for the past six months or so.

Gum trees in the vines at Yangarra Estates (left), Shelley and our family winemaker (middle), and Grenache raisins (right) 

Grenache raisins at Yangarra Estates (left), and enjoying a Yangarra Estates flight (right)

 
The Yangarra Estates homestead (left), and Samuel’s Gorge Winery (right)

The sun setting over the ocean and McLaren Vale vineyards from Samuel’s Gorge Winery (left), and Todd sports some serious fashion (right) 

Couldn’t go to Adelaide without a trip into Central Market.  We thought Isabella and Layla (my cousin’s daughters) might enjoy the trip too, so took them along with us for the day…

Isabella gets a cheese course (left), and makes a birthday present for mum (right)

Two weeks is never long enough, so Dad organized a bit of a get together to coincide with Todd’s birthday on our first Friday night in Adelaide to catch up with a few people we didn’t want to miss.  Estia’s food never disappoints, I think most people left the restaurant with their belts loosened.  And I know that Todd, after a couple of nasty birthday shots and four or five more ouzos, was definitely feeling the worse for wear at the end of the night.  Dad brought four cases of wine with him; there was hardly anything left, not bad work for 22 or so people!

An assortment of happy couples with Immanuel College connections (left), the Blythe Street Massive and assorted VC crew (middle), and a different angle on the Immanuel folk (right)

  Todd [before the shots], Chris, Erin and Owen (left)

 
Todd working on one of his many shots for the night (right)

Big Mick Craven (left), Todd gets stuck in his cake and some ouzo (middle), and Todd battling at the end of the night (right) 

We were able to organize our visit to coincide with ET and Sally’s wedding, which was held on May 17th at beautiful Saint Mary’s Church in North Adelaide.  We had a bit of time to spare after the wedding, which we wiled away at a favorite haunt, the Queen’s Head, with the reception following at Saint Mark’s College (familiar ground to us all).  Sally looked angelic in her gown and the night finished up with some very well-prepared, moving speeches.  The night also finished up with a little too much alcohol, some baked goods from the O’Connell Street Bakery and an AB from Wogo’s!

  Sally gets walked down the aisle (left), representation from Da Hill (middle), and Jazz with a nice looking lady (right)

Owen and Erin at the Queen’s Head (left), and one of Tariq’s beers (right)

Todd has some problems with his ears (left) and the boys from Da Hill remember the good old days at Wilcannia (right)

 
Very happy with the arrival of the cheese plate (left), and Todd and me (right)

Todd does some serenading (left and middle), and the boys quicken the pace of heart disease with an AB to finish the night (right)

After wowing us with his BBQ skills for lunch, Chris was kind enough to take us into his work (he’s a keeper at the Adelaide Zoo) for an up-close-and-personal meeting with some of the animals he works with.  Don’t get too many chances to hand feed a tiger!

Chris gives us the royal tour of the tiger holding pens and demonstrates how to hand feed them chunks of meat

Out the back of the lion enclosures with one of the female twins (left)

 
Cloudscape over the Grange jetty (left), and lunch at the Grange Kiosk with Dad (right)

While there were quite a few kids around Adelaide that we’d never met before, we really wanted to get over to Yorke Peninsula and meet the Browns’ kids that have popped up since we were last in Adelaide.  Fortunately Tom and Marissa Brown were able to take a couple of days off of work, so were able to make the trip over to Minlaton as well.

I spent a lot of time on the Brown’s farm as a little tacker, so always enjoy going back there, even if the visit is only quick (like this time).  Ed and Rebecca are renovating one of the beautiful, old stone homesteads on the property, what they’ve done so far looks fantastic.  16 foot ceilings, wrap-around verandahs, I love the old Aussie farmhouses.  Max, Ed and Becca’s oldest, is a real character, it was great to meet the four kids, and Becca put on a real show with a true blue Aussie leg of lamb for us.  Sticky date pudding for dessert, we were in heaven at the dinner table!   

Max at the beginning of the driveway (left), and Navan Homestead [Ed and Becca's house] (right)

Navan Homestead and Becca’s beautiful gardens (left), Eleanor cruises the kitchen (middle), and brother and sister (right)

 
Sunrise over the fields at Navan Homestead (left), and a Galah watches over the farm (right)

A shot to keep for Max’s 21st birthday (left), and trying to gulp a fly in the scrub at Hardwicke Bay (right)

Max, Isaac and Emma by the fire at Hardwicke Bay (left), and the Valtenbergs and Brown clans (right)

 
Me tending lunch over an open flame (left), Becca, Tom and Max tend to a scrumptious bush damper (middle), and I chat with Ian and Max (right)

Only one night on Yorke Peninsula and we were back in Adelaide.  Dad organized a dinner for us at one of his favorite restaurants, Enzo’s, as a bit of a send off.  Fantastic food, and great to catch up with Bev, who arrived in town on our last day from his travels for work.  If Dad tells us one more time about the special dish Enzo’s have for Andrea Bocelli I think we’re going to check him into the nut house. 

We spent our last weekend in Sydney with the Newbys in Oyster Bay.  Also had a chance to catch up with Nick and Hannah Fisher (I don’t think I’d seen Hannah since I was a teenager!).  We spent the day walking around the Sydney DBC, taking in the sights, dropped in at the famous BBQ King for a Peking duck dinner and then met the Fishers out for a few too many drinks…  Unfortunately, I overdid it a little on our night out in Sydney and came down with a fever on Sunday, spent our last day in Australia curled up on the couch feeling very ordinary.

Todd looking quite sophisticated with the flower-decorated tea cup (left), Layla and Isabella blow out the candles on Mum’s birthday cake (middle), and dinner at Enzo’s with Dad on our last night in Adelaide (right)   

The Sydney Opera House (left), and Sydney Harbor Bridge (right)

Out on the town with Nick and Hannah Fisher

 
The Cronulla Strip (left), and the Newby girls (right) 

Two weeks went way too fast, as it always does; and as we always do, we managed to miss some people whom we’d originally planned to catch up with.  Que, sera, sera, can’t do everything, I guess.  But we had a lot of fun, especially meeting all the little ones who have popped up all over the place during the last few years.  We’re now going to have to start dreaming about pies, schnitzels, Perryman’s pasties and Farmer’s Union Iced Coffee for another year or two…

With all the wet weather we’ve been having, we decided it was time for a bit of sun during winter so we ventured southeast to visit Dave and Angie Stuart in the Bahamas.   Dave and Angie have been in the Bahamas for a few months working on a friend’s house.  Where do we start…

The house, I guess.  The house is a story unto itself…  Upon King Edward VIII’s abdication of the English throne in 1936 he left England with his new wife, American divorcée Wallis Simpson, to live in the Bahamas.  The house that Dave and Ang are working on was Governor and Commander-In-Chief Edward’s house.  It really is an amazing place: extensive gardens, ornate wood- and stone-work throughout the house, some of the most fantastic wrought iron work I’ve ever seen…  Extending almost the entire length of the main house is a giant rainwater tank that Dave and I ventured into; kids would have a lot of fun in this place, it’s a hide-and-seek dream.

Our humble abode during our stay in Nassau (left), and crawling into the rainwater tank (right).

The rainwater tank extends under the entire length of the room to the left above, the center of the house (middle), and the patio and pool (right).

 
The house overlooks a golf course with Cable Beach in the distance (right).  Jack (right) is one of the two full-time gardeners that maintain the estate.  Jack and Luke, the other gardener, were a very funny couple: the ride-on lawnmower here is only for Jack’s use, Luke has to use the push mower.  Same goes with tools, there’s two of everything, one for each gardener!

Rosie, the housekeeper, braiding Nola’s hair with a helping hand from Ang (left) and the work crew repairing the house’s roof (right).

Nassau is New Providence’s main town and the largest settlement in the Bahamas, housing a little over 200,000 people.  The main port always seemed to have between one and five gigantic cruise ships docked, those ships really were something to see up close, like floating cities.  While the cruise ships have brought a lot of the global retail chains to the shopping district around the wharves, there’s still a lot of local culture to be found if you venture away from the main docks.  Angie took us down to Potter’s Cay, the section of Nassau’s port where the local fisherman dock to sell their wares, mail boats come and go, and a plethora of other street vendors can be found.

Barracuda (left) and fresh conch (right) at the docks in Potter’s Cay.

 
Fresh conch salad for lunch (left) and a local woodcarver whittles his wares on the docks (right).

We sampled a Caribbean delicacy, conch salad, which is basically raw conch, onion, tomato and jalapeno dowsed in citrus juice, as well as conch fritters, deep fried cubes of conch.  The conch was about as fresh as it comes: the stalls store their conch on ropes in the ocean behind their storefronts, when an order’s made they pull up the rope and crack a conch right in front of you.  I also sampled a conch tube (I’m not sure if that’s the correct terminology), a clear cylinder the locals extract from the conch before it’s filleted and suck down raw as an aphrodisiac.  I don’t know if I’ll be consuming too many conch tubes!

I’m not usually a big fan of dominoes, or as the folk around northern California call it, Mexican Train.  But the retired Bahamian men sure make the game worth watching.  It seems that once retired, Bahamian men are quite happy to sit out their existence at the local domino table, talking their fair share of B.S. to each other and playing eight-stack dominoes.  The fun part of the game is playing the domino each time: these guys slam down the dominoes so hard that most of the domino tables in the Bahamas are specially reinforced to withstand the continual pounding!  It really was a hoot to watch, the guy above is standing up while slamming down a domino to impart maximal force.  He’s probably giving the other players a mouthful about how he good he is at the same time!

Dave and Ang thought they’d better show us some of the extravagances of the island, so we toured through a couple of gated communities where the estates seemed to be as big as regular American suburbs (Sean Connery lives in one of them), and also ventured over to Paradise Island.  Paradise Island is connected to New Providence by a toll bridge, it’s perched above the northern end of New Providence across the water from Nassau and Potter’s Cay.  Paradise Island houses Nassau’s largest resort, Atlantis, and also a mega-yacht harbor.  Once inside Atlantis you’d almost swear you were in Las Vegas.  There’s casinos, restaurants, shopping, everything a consumer could want!  The mega-yacht harbor was really something to  see, I can’t imagine how much some of the boats moored in there would be worth.  You know a boat’s worth some good coin when it’s got a spa on the back and a helicopter pad on the top!

Atlantis’ mega-yacht harbor by night (left and middle), and Paradise Island and Atlantis (right).

One of the reasons we ventured over to Atlantis was to check out the aquarium Dave and Angie had said was definitely worth seeing.  They weren’t wrong…  Underneath the casino is a sea water aquarium called The Dig, the Atlantis designers really did an amazing job with the display.  The aquarium housed everything from eels to manta rays.  Tuna, clown fish, seahorses, sharks, if it swims in the Caribbean seas it’s in this aquarium!

The entrance to the aquarium is next to one of Atlantis many restaurants (left), in The Dig (middle), and Nemo the clown fish (right).

Some gargantuan eels in The Dig (left), a grey nurse shark in the Atlantis aquarium (middles), and some grouper and a manta ray (right).

Another adventure on Paradise Island was getting to see a Junkanoo.  Traditionally the   junkanoo is performed around Christmas and New Year, the one at Atlantis runs to add to the Caribbean feel of the resort, but it was still great to watch.  One of the locals told us that the junkanoos at Christmas and New Year can run for more than 12 hours; that’s some serious endurance, the performers are running around, singing and dancing the whole time.  The parade we saw had some amazing costumes, a full brass band and a bunch of dancers following the entourage.

Dave was pretty adamant that we go to church on one of the Sundays we were in Nassau.  On our second day in the Bahamas we visited Transfiguration Baptist Church, what a fun morning.  The five of us were the only white people in the church, the kids in the children’s choir couldn’t keep their eyes of us.  Dave said the service wasn’t as lively as another church he’d been to, but it was a lot of fun, a real life Sister Act experience with a full band and three different choirs singing their praises.

 
A local vendor on the side of the road selling fresh fruit and vegetables (left), and Transfiguration Baptist Church (right).

While Nassau and New Providence offer a great deal, at Dave and Ang’s suggestion we took a five-seater plane south into the Exumas chain to a fantastic island called Staniel Cay.  When I was purchasing the tickets for our flight I first learned (the hard way) one of the cardinal rules of the Bahamas: when you ask for a price you’d better take it the first time because most of the time additional price requests will result in a different amount, and that amount will likely increase each time you ask!  So, after haggling about our flights for a day or two, we hopped a plane for the 30 minute ride down to Staniel Cay.  The plane was even smaller than the one we took to hop between islands in Fiji, a little five-seater, my long legs got me a seat next to the pilot up front.  The flight was a real treat, the Exumas chain has hundreds of islands, the small plane gave us a bird’s eye view of the mostly uninhabited cays, the beautiful turquoise of the Caribbean and deep blue of the Atlantic to the east.  We met Joshua and his mum on our flight, we later met Joshua’s dad in the bar on Valentine’s Day.  I think I’m lucky someone didn’t end up bringing Joshua home with us!

The plane to Staniel Cay (middle and right), and our new friend Joshua (top and left).

Staniel Cay is the only place in the world with the distinction of having two James Bond movies filmed on location, Thunderball and Never Say Never Again, and was also the site where Splash was filmed.  The island is picture perfect, it’s only a few miles long and maybe a mile wide, home to around 50 full-time residents.  There is a general store, a supermarket (if you could call it that), three bars and two restaurants.  The "airport" terminal to the right is very well ventilated and boasts some great views…  The supermarket took a little time to find, once we figured out that it was hidden behind a shed (pictured below) we were all set.  The pricing in the supermarket was quite interesting, everything seemed to be $3.50.  Dave and Ang pointed us to some quaint cottages on the beach for our accommodations, we woke every morning to the sound of water lapping on the sand and beautiful views of the Caribbean.  Life’s tough…  Dave and Ang also clued us in on some of the island’s secrets, one of which was finding a local woman who pretty much cooks lunch for all the locals each day.  So upon arrival we sought out Bernadette’s mum (as she’s fondly known on the island) for a traditional Bahamian lunch of lamb, chicken, rice and steamed vegetables.  Good tucker.

We spent a good portion of our dining and drinking time at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, which was about five minutes walk from our beach-side cottage.  For an island where everything has to be shipped in from Nassau or the United States, the fare at the Yacht Club was very good and surprisingly inexpensive.  The bartenders at the Yacht Club were great to talk to, we befriended one of them from Jamaica named Dave, who clued us in on more of the island’s secrets, particularly the best places on the island to snorkel.  We were pretty stoked to find that Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay was the best-selling wine at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club, the winemaker of the family enjoyed celebrity status with some folk at the bar when they discovered that she has a hand in making it.

   Sunset from our cabin on the beach (left), sunset over the Staniel Cay Yacht Club from our cabin on the beach (middle, and the bar at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club (right).

There are a few cars on the island, but the majority of people use electric golf carts to  get around.  For the first day we walked around the northern end of the island, then splurged on a golf cart for the rest of our stay.  There is only one paved road stretching from north to south, beach access usually involved motoring our cart through the dunes to one of the island’s many beaches.  Those little carts have amazing off-road capabilities!  The photo on the right is one of the trails we took at David’s (the bartender) recommendation to do some snorkeling on the Atlantic side of the island.  While a lot rougher than the tranquil Caribbean waters, the sea life on the Atlantic reef was absolutely amazing.  The fish were everywhere, a lot bigger than the species only a mile away on the other side of the island.  I was almost done with my diving on the Atlantic reef and was swimming back into the beach through a sandy clearing in the reef when I got a shot of adrenaline at seeing five black-tip reef sharks swimming about three or four meters away.  Sure got my heart beating!  I managed to snap a shot of one of them as it cruised past, you can kind of make it out on the right.  Needless to say, I didn’t stay in the water too much longer after taking the shot below.

Reef sharks in the water with me (left), and the reef and beach on the Atlantic side of Staniel Cay (the sharks were about five meters off the shore!).

The majority of visitors to Staniel Cay are sailors making their way through the Exumas chain and stopping off for supplies and a meal.  We decided to join the boats one day and rented a small Boston Whaler from the general store to cruise through some of the nearby cays.  We started out heading south of Staniel Cay to an uninhabited island (the name escapes me) for a bit of a snorkel.  We also stopped off at Big Major Spot, one of the larger cays to the north of Staniel, where the locals told us we could feed the semi-wild pigs inhabiting the island.  We were cruising into one of the beaches on Big Major Spot, wondering how to find the pigs, when down the beach one came running.  I was a little tentative being in the water with her at the beginning (yes, she swam) but all she wanted was some of the bread we had with us.  A real hoot, she liked a bit of a scratch behind the ears as well as our bread…  The beaches on the islands surrounding Staniel were beautiful, we had all of them to ourselves all day.  We’d just see one that looked nice, pull our dinghy in to shore, and take it all in!

One of the beaches on Big Major Spot (left), and me in the water with our new-found friend (right).

One of the other unnamed and uninhabited islands north of Staniel Cay.

We’d also been told by both Dave and Angie and the Staniel locals that we should stop off at Thunderball Grotto, named after the 007 Thunderball movie that had a number of scenes shot there.  The grotto is inside a small, limestone island just north of Staniel Cay, you’d never know by looking from the outside that the island is hollow.  The view of the grotto opening, which was underwater, from our Boston Whaler is pictured to the right.  We’d also been told to take some bread with us to feed the plethora of fish inside the grotto.  It was an amazing experience, the fish came so thick as soon as the bread hit the water that we were able to swipe our hands through the schools and touch them.  I even had my leg bitten by one because I don’t think it could tell what was food and what was me!

  
The hoards of fish inside Thunderball Grotto (left and right), and swimming with the fish just outside of the cave opening (middle).

It was a little tough to get a good shot of the inside of the grotto because there was water all over the lens of our little digital underwater camera, but the shot to the right shows the roof of the cave with the small opening that lit up everything inside.  A pretty cool little spot…

On Valentine’s Day the place to be on Staniel Cay was Club Thunderball, a restaurant and bar perched at the very northernmost tip of the island next to Pirate Trap Beach.  We had to book a day ahead of time (using a CB radio) to get a reservation, but had a fantastic dinner of steak and lobster, and also had a chance to schmooze with some of the locals.  It was quite an event, everyone was dressed up to the nines, Cookie (pictured below) was one of the workmen on the island that worked with Joshua’s dad.

Getting ready for dinner at Club Thunderball on Valentine’s Day (left), and having a drink with Cookie at Club Thunderball’s bar (right).

Ho Te Kai Beach at the southern end of Staniel Cay (left).  We visited this spot twice, a beautiful beach with some great snorkeling just around the corner.  We had to drive our golf cart around the airplane runway to access the beach (right), not exactly high security at this airport, the sign telling us to stay off the runway made for a good laugh…

Pirate Trap Beach at the northern tip of the island with Thunderball Grotto island in the center and Big Major Spot (the pig island) on the right (left), the Atlantic Ocean at the northern end of Staniel Cay with more of the Exumas islands stretching north (middle), and Staniel Cay from the air on our way back to Nassau (right).

Sadly we had to leave Staniel Cay, such a beautiful and fun place, but we had a few days left back in Nassau with Dave and Angie.  The Nassau Cricket Club was one of our dining stops during our last weekend on the island, they had some seriously good steak and mushroom pies, made me think of the Dulwich Bakery.  I think both Dave and I had a little too much to drink at the Cricket Club, I don’t quite remember how I got home that night!  Dave’s daily afternoon gin and tonics probably helped with the amnesia, the glasses he uses are the length of my forearm.

On our second to last day Dave decided he wanted to tackle the driveway and the less-than-ideal boat ramps on New Providence with the 30-foot boat that came with the property where we were staying.  What an adventure…  We ended up getting the little Isuzu truck bogged in the sand while trying to launch the boat, and had to have some of the locals help us rock the boat off the trailer to get it into the water.  But it was a beautiful day on the ocean and we had the chance to do some of the best snorkeling we’ve ever done off of an island just west of New Providence.  Lobsters, sting rays, I even saw a turtle and a pretty good sized grey nurse shark in the water with me.

Tackling the serpentine driveway with the boat (left), and the sandy boat ramp at Jaws Beach (right).

Well and truly bogged in the sand, no way we were moving backwards or forwards.  The guy on the right is one of the two guys that helped us rock the boat off the trailer and (finally) into the water.

How’s that for amazing water color?!  The shot on the right is us anchored above the first reef we found for the day, another world under that water…

If getting the boat in the water wasn’t hard enough, getting it out was a whole different challenge.  Dave decided we were going to dig through the almost two foot deep sand on top of the ramp and down to the concrete for better traction.  After digging channels for the trailer and truck tires for about 30 minutes, the skies opened up and turned our trenches into small creeks.  Scrap that idea…  We ultimately used a concrete ramp in one of the gated communities nearby, but getting in there was… Well…  A tale for a different day.

Breakfast at Compass Point (left), and the pool at the Compass Point Hotel (right).

I don’t think either of us could have asked for a more enjoyable trip or better hosts.  Hopefully Dave and Angie will stop over in San Fran on their way back to Oz so we can return their hospitality…

The winemaker of the family was asked to represent Kendall-Jackson at the Taos Winter Wine Festival this last weekend in Taos, New Mexico.  Somehow I fangled a companion ticket and got to go along for the ride!  The Wine Festival was held in the town of Taos, about two-and-a-half hours drive from Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city.  Irby Wood, one of Kendall-Jackson’s sales representatives and probably the best New Mexico tour guide you could ask for, picked us up from the airport on Wednesday evening and took us through Santa Fe, the state’s capital, on the way to Taos.  We stopped for dinner at a New Mexican restaurant in Santa Fe called La Fonda to sample the local cuisine; very similar to Mexican food, New Mexican food has the addition of hot red or green chile sauce on most of the plates.  La Fonda also boasted some of the best guacamole we’ve ever eaten, it was made from scratch right at our table, so good!  We could definitely venture back to Santa Fe some time for a few more days, lots of restaurants and countless art galleries, as well as the oldest building left standing in the United States.

We were put up by the Taos Winter Wine Festival at an amazing resort called El Monte Sagrado.  As well as being probably the most exquisite resort at which either of us has ever stayed, the hotel also had an eco- twist: they recycle 100% of their grey water, pull their electricity from a solar grid, and use geothermal heat to warm up the rooms in the cold high-desert climate… 

Our rooms on the left at El Monte Sagrado with the New Mexican Rockies in the background

An Elk statue on the El Monte Sagrado grounds

The El Monte Sagrado grounds with the New Mexican Rockies in the background

We didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the town of Taos because the Wine Festival was held in the mountains, 30 minutes up the road at Taos Ski Valley.  We did, however, get to eat at in town at Lambert’s, a fantastic game restaurant where we enjoyed pheasant, elk sirloin and beef tenderloin, an amazing meal.  Irby also introduced us to his favorite Taos coffee shop, The Bean, where we stopped for breakfast every morning on our way up the mountain.  Their breakfast burritos, which I unfortunately didn’t sample until the last morning, are pretty bomb.

We were free to ski during the day Thursday through Saturday.  During the evening on Friday all of the wineries attending the Festival gathered for an across-the-board tasting event.  Think ZAP but a lot smaller scale…  There was also a bunch of great food to go with the libations, I took multiple trips to the table with the steer hind quarter pictured below.  I never knew that there were vineyards in New Mexico, but there was a New Mexican winery there, as well as a bunch from California and even a showing from Penfolds and Rosemount.

The Kendall-Jackson table at the tasting

Some of the fantastic food to accompany the wine

Saturday night was the Kendall-Jackson wine dinner, which was held at Rhoda’s Restaurant at the base of the ski hill.  Each course was paired with a Kendall Jackson wine, and the guest winemaker (that’s Mrs. V) did a fantastic job of discussing the specifics of each varietal as they were served.  I wish I’d kept a copy of the menu, talk about good food!

The setup at Rhoda’s Restaurant

The Kendall-Jackson superstars

Now for the skiing…  When I was a teenager I remember sitting on a chairlift with a bunch of instructors in Breckenridge, Colorado and listening to them plan their next trip to ski Taos.  Ski instructors who get to ski free in Breckenridge wanting to drive to Taos to ski?  So ever since sitting on that chairlift I’ve wanted to see what Taos was all about.  It didn’t disappoint…  The mountain isn’t huge when you compare it to places like Vail or The Canyons, but the terrain is a lot of fun and the steepness of the majority of the runs is great.  In addition, the mountain has held out on installing a lift to reach the upper steeps, the only way up is to hike, so the powder stays fresh for a good portion of a powder day if you’re willing to make the hike at 12,000 feet.  We scored some nice powder on Thursday and Friday, when it snowed pretty much all day.  Saturday was clear but still very cold, it gave us a chance to actually visualize the mountain and surrounds that had been cloaked in cloud up until then.  I made the hike to the upper bowls a couple of times, one of the runs was (sorry Steamboat) probably one of the best tree runs I’ve ever done: waist deep powder, super steep, if only it was longer…  Somebody enjoyed their Christmas skis, taking a lesson on Thursday and tearing up the powder by the weekend’s end.

Taos Ski Valley with the bottom portion of the mountain (Al’s Run) on the right

 
Irby on his way up Al’s Run Lift

Skiing the trees on Reforma

More powder on Reforma

The view at the top of Oster while hiking to the Highline Ridge

The view of Kachina Peak from the top of Donkey while hiking to the Highline Ridge

Fresh tracks down Juarez from the Highline Ridge

Hiking the Highline Ridge

Making the most of Hunziker Bowl

Fresh powder in Hunziker Bowl

Taos Ski Valley