After a busy summer, September has always brought with it a travel hangover.  It’s back to school, back to work (although I’m working all through summer), and the start of a new cycle of planning adventures, conjuring up stories, locking down speaking events, along wit the various puzzle pieces that string my strange career together.    
 
Time flies when you’re in the flow, and the flow was relentless this summer.  I kicked the holidays off by taking both kids to Aruba, then onto Montreal, the Eastern Townships, and Charlevoix.  You can read how that worked out with my Aruba and Montreal columns on Canadian Geographic.  A few more stories are still coming down the pipe, but in the meantime, you can check out the family travel videos I put together recording that journey.

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​My next trip didn’t get a video because I was too busy hanging on for dear life.  My annual Harley Davidson B.C Roadtrip was fortunately uneventful, other than a few torrential downpours and riding into apocalyptic smoke in the B.C interior.   Renting a bike from Eaglerider Vancouver, my Road Glide carved up the asphalt like Thanksgiving turkey, and my fellow riders always make great company.  This year we had Norm’s support vehicle which shuttled instruments for outdoor and hotel room jams, including a memorable night as Daniel Cook and the Radiators entertained wildfire crews in the parking lot of a cheap motel in Cache Creek.   The sky was sepia, with an end-of-days feel to the town.  Motorcycle trips always make a dramatic canvas to paint a memory.
 
With the kids away at summer camp, the missus and I took a rare opportunity to head to Europe together, spending a lovely week exploring Salzburg and Vienna. After several family trips, the grown-up couple travel was refreshing, full of museums and stellar meals, urban wandering, and rare time to recharge and reconnect.   Europe was cooking, again, with temperatures in the high 30Cs.  All signs point to these temperatures being the new normal, which is problematic in old Europe, where people walk up flights of stairs and air conditioning isn’t common.   We loved our visit to Austria, as you can see in the story I wrote about Vienna, and the videos I put together that record our experience:

The following week, I found myself on a plane with my father to Halifax to tick another Great  Canadian Trails adventure off the bucket list.  After hiking the East Coast Trail in Newfoundland, this time we’d be cycling across Nova Scotia, the first visit to the province for my dad, and the first time he’d be riding an e-bike.  The resulting story for Canadian Geographic reveals how that went, and why my dad wants to plan our next e-biking adventure.   It was world class food, wine, scenery, and great company all the way through, and was another compelling reason why active Canadian outdoor adventures make the best multi-generational memories.  If you need another one, check out the video, with rockstar drone footage courtesy the talented Pete Heck. ​

​A few days later, I found myself casting and reeling for monster trophy fish in the remote Northwest Territory.  My son joined me for a true bucket list angling experience in the north, a story that manifested after I met some lovely folks in Inuvik and Yellowknife after delivering a tourism keynote last November.  Lac La Matre is a lake sea almost three times the size of Toronto, and it is home to lake trout and northern pike that fuel the dreams of serious anglers.   For my son’s first fishing trip, it’s like starting a mountaineering journey with a hike up Mount Everest.  The resulting story captures it best, but check out the video below, which is a neat bookend to Gali’s trip north to Churchill several years ago. The kids sure grow up fast.

​I dropped off one kid, picked the other up, and flew east to Toronto for a story about the traditional southern Ontario resort experience.  The Resorts of Ontario encompass dozens of properties, but we’d focus on four different locations with different business models, ranging from all-inclusive to corporate, wine and golf to cottage.  Threading between each resort was a road trip through beautiful countryside, farmland, and a reminder how easy it is to escape the bustle of Toronto.   It also felt like a bittersweet swan-song to the travels I’ve done with my 13-year-old daughter, written since she was a baby, and recorded in video since she was 4-years, and spanning 18 countries.  There’s an innocence lost as she begins high school, and naturally begins to stake the boundaries of her indepen​dence.  Whatever the next stage brings, she’ll always be my sky full of stars.

​8 weeks, 4 provinces, 2 countries, 1 territory – and still some time for backyard BBQs too.  I usually begin each September with an empty plate that almost immediately fills up with tasty adventures, opportunities, and unexpected desserts.   This annual cycle has some semblance of consistency, but nothing can be taken for granted, and every journey remains a prized and deeply appreciated gift.   I’m excited, anxious and eager to see what will happen next.     

This month I set off to cycle across one of my favourite provinces with one of my favourite people, and working with one of my favourite tour companies.   After an inspiring visit to Newfoundland to hike the East Coast Trail, my father and I flew off to the Maritimes to take on a new Great Canadian Trails multi-day cycling itinerary:  The Best of Nova Scotia by Bike.     A decade ago, we rode across Prince Edward Island in similar fashion, with the resulting story becoming one of the most popular chapters in the book.  My goal was to demonstrate that a multi-day bike ride is for everyone, and that you don’t have to be a hardcore cyclist with heavy saddlebags, ripped calves and tight spandex.   Mission accomplished.
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These days, my dad and I are both significantly heavier, greyer, and arguably wiser too.  This is why we chose to conquer Nova Scotia on e-bikes.  Push a button, and the pedal assist turns us into fit super-humans, swallowing up hills with little physical exertion.  After exploring Halifax, we spent a week riding the Rum Runners Trail on the South Shore, staying in Lunenburg and Chester.   We were then shuttled to the lush Annapolis Valley, where we rode the Harvest Moon Trail through communities like Wolfville, Kingston, and Annapolis Royal, with its rich history stretching back to the early 1600s.    I’ve written that adventure up for Canadian Geographic, so I wanted to focus on some of the other highlights of our week in the Maritimes:  the wonderful people we met along the way.

We park our e-bikes and head into Lightfoot and Wolfville for pizza and salad, returning to find a couple named Simon and Sandy parking their own e-bikes.  Their models have a throttle function, so they don’t even have to pedal if they don’t want to.  They’re visiting from Halifax, and we naturally fold into a conversation about where we’ve been and where we’re going, but mostly about e-bikes and how much we love them.
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We meet a lot more people in Annapolis Valley: a German baker and an Austrian chef with her charming granddaughter.   A couple RV’ing from Texas, and another couple visiting from Atlanta.  There’s a family from Louisiana rediscovering their Arcadian roots before the province-wide celebrations on Acadia Day; local ladies drinking Tidal Bay white wine at a wine bar, and a couple who retired to the valley from Ontario to make honey and soaps.  I should have taken their names and photos too.  There’s always more people than there is time to write about them.

Nova Scotia in summer beams with the good times.  The valleys are bursting with fruit and vegetables, the small towns are full of life, and the Rum Runners Trailway and Harvest Moon Trail are the perfect thread to weave it altogether.   Still, it’s the people you meet – locals and visitors – who add the spark of personality and unpredictability you can’t plan for.  The people you meet who create the paradise you find.

Since I started traveling with my oral appliance, things have improved greatly when I travel with my wife.  Hotel walls have stayed blissfully unblamed. I wake up sharper and ready to go, because it turns out that uninterrupted restorative sleep, even a version engineered by a small device shifting my jaw a few millimetres forward, does what sleep is supposed to do.

If you travel often, or share a bed with someone who's ever sighed heavily at 3 a.m. and reached for a spare pillow, it's worth getting properly assessed for an oral appliance instead of assuming you're doomed to a lifetime of nasal strips and apologetic mornings. I know it’s not glamorous, but you’re not wearing this thing out in public.  Like a bidet, an oral appliance is not something you usually mention at dinner parties, even if it transforms your life.  But it might just be the smallest, most quietly game-changing thing in your carry-on.  Best of all, nobody has to sleep in the bathtub. 
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Note: Snoring can also be a symptom of sleep apnea. If you snore regularly, it's worth getting professionally assessed before deciding whether an oral appliance is appropriate.

​I tell stories about destinations. This is very different from assuming I know how best to visit that destination, or what the current situation may be on the ground.   Sometimes I can help, but sometimes the stories I tell date back too far in the past to be of much practical use.  Which is not to say the story isn’t worthwhile, because sometimes, the stories are magical and timeless.  Take, for example, my very brief visit to Barcelona at the tail end of 1992. 
 
This was a different world of course, before social media, before smart phones, before the Internet. The famous Basílica de la Sagrada Família was decades away from being completed, in fact it was only officially inaugurated this very month, 34 years later.  It still made an impression, but has very little to do with my Barcelona story.   For that, we need to track even further back in time to a kid growing up during the global cultural boycott of Apartheid, South Africa.

​South African radio enjoyed a steady slew of music hits drawn from the best US and UK artists, but we saw few if any touring international artists.  Queen did play Sun City, a huge resort outside of Johannesburg and according to the Apartheid government, technically outside of South Africa too.  Sun City was located in Bophuthatswana, a puppet state considered an independent country by the National Party of South Africa and a sham by everyone else.  Queen performed there, along with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Frank Sinatra, and inexplicably Stevie Wonder, all drawing the ire of their contemporaries.  I was too young for any of it, although coincidentally, my first-ever international rockstar concert was in Sun City shortly after the end of Apartheid. Thanks for the hits, Bryan Adams.   With the fall of Apartheid came the arrival of touring international artists, many of them at the tail end of their careers.  Nobody was particularly eager to travel to the south of Africa, but I’m sure Duran Duran and Dr Alban appreciated the pay checks.   Mother Africa was finally opening its arms to the world, but I had missed the adolescent experience of seeing a world-class act coming up in the clubs or theatres, or seeing any world-class acts at all. 

My friends and I were obsessed with the Black Crowes’ first album, 1990's Shake Your Money Maker. It was hip-slinging blues-rock Americana containing classics like Hard to Handle, She Talks to Angels, and Twice as Hard, which we would sing along to and crank through the distorted speakers in our first cars. You might be surprised to learn that my first big travel experience was a Contiki tour after finishing high school, a possible reward for above-average grades but more likely a testament to my begging skills.   The tour would kick off in London, and reading an imported copy of NME,  I saw that the Black Crowes would be performing in London the very evening of our arrival.  I can’t recall how we managed to buy tickets…this in the days before the internet or the proliferation of credit cards, but hell hath no determination like a kid obsessed with music.  Somehow, we scored tickets to our first ever ‘cool’ show on the night of our first ever visit to Europe, and somehow it all went smoothly.  We got to the Brixton Academy, got up front, and got to see these Atlanta-born rock n’roll gods cranking their hits while we screamed every word.  You never forget that first show. ​

The Contiki European bus tour covered something like 11 countries in 18 days, a whistlestop visit to Western Europe’s Greatest Hits.  We saw the Eiffel Tower, Venice and the Tower of Pisa, but mostly we saw a lot of beer and older Australians encouraging us to drink as much of it as humanly possible.  Naturally it’s all a haze and a very inauspicious start to a long career chasing meaningful, authentic travel experiences.  
 
We got to Barcelona on a slow Sunday, and that night we decided to find somewhere to drink.  There were no screens to distract us, and the girls we were hanging out with – shout out to Nikki, Rachel and Samantha – decided wisely to get some rest.  So off we went – Brad, Sam and I – looking for a pub which really shouldn’t have been that difficult, but what did we know from sleepy Sunday nights in Catalonia?  Everything was shuttered, but eventually we found a single open coffee shop, empty and well-lit, where we ordered a round of Peroni Nastro Azzurro beer. We couldn’t have been there very long when the door of the coffee shop opened and in walked an assortment of strange, long-haired freaky looking people, also in search of a few drinks.
 
“Dude, I think that’s the Black Crowes,” I recall Brad saying.   We knew the band was on a European tour, and it wasn’t difficult to recognize the same guys who stood on stage just a few metres away from us a week earlier.   They had hippie velvet threads, dirty long hair and undernourished rockstar bods. What are the chances?   

I should emphasize that it wasn’t just the Black Crowes.  For us, the Black Crowes were like Pearl Jam and Nirvana, like 80s era A-ha and Duran Duran, like Metallica and Rush.  Yet inexplicably, here they were, just us and the Black Crowes, accompanied by security guards and several gorgeous groupies.  Of course, it fell on me to do something about it.  Gingerly, I walked up to the bar, approached the singer Chris Robinson, and remember saying something like:
“Sorry, you look like the singer of the Black Crowes.”
“Yeah man,” said the singer of the Black Crowes.
“Are you Chris Robinson,” I asked.
“Yeah man,” replied Chris Robinson.  
“We saw you last week in London. We’re from South Africa. You’re the first real famous band we’ve ever seen!”
“Yeah man!” said Chris Robinson.

This is where things get blurry in my memory, but here’s how, three decades later, I believe it went.  Chris called over other members of the band and told them we were from South Africa and they were the first real famous band we’d ever seen, a week ago, in London.  He then invited us all to the bar, where he bought us some beers.   The security guys initially looked sceptical but quickly relaxed because we were just three skinny, nerdy geeks beaming at our good fortune.  We had some conversations about weed.  I recall speaking to one of the groupies, who told me she was the girlfriend of guitarist Rich Robinson, Chris’s younger brother.   They had played in Barcelona that night, and were winding down.  They had thick southern drawls which sounded like something you’d hear in a movie, because that’s the only place we’d ever heard accents like this before.  I think one of us did ask for a photo, but Chris Robinson declined, and we were certainly not going to press it.  After a half hour or so, they packed up and left, leaving us stunned.   We walked back to the hotel, hollering and howling, hugging each other, jumping about, utterly elated for having met our heroes.  It was the apex moment of late teenage joy.   
 
A few days later, watching MTV in a hotel room, we caught the Black Crowes video for a new single called Sometimes Salvation, a bluesy number pulled from their second album, The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion.  We didn’t have MTV in South Africa, so every video we saw made an immediate impression.  And there she was:  Rich Robinson’s girlfriend, wearing I swear the same tiger print jacket, looking a little sad.  Man, we loved that album too.  

Tastes shifted, times changed. It pains me to say but I can’t remember a single song from the Black Crowes’ third album, Amorica, or anything from their seven albums since. A new one just dropped in 2026, called A Pound of Feathers.  I expect they’ve aged better than we have, and certainly have better hair. 

My very first scuba dive was a house reef off the island of Tufi in Papua New Guinea. Firmly located in the Coral Triangle, a region of mind-boggling diversity and with the healthiest corals left in our oceans, the house reef of the Tufi Dive Resort was sensational, not that I had a frame of reference.  My second dive was a wreck dive, followed by a night dive. How this came to be is another story altogether, but for now I thought it would be fun to look at three of my favourite dives:

​It takes 2.5 hours with the swell for our dive boat to make its way along the west Kauai coastline towards the islands Ni’ihau and Lehua.  It’s my first dive in the region, and fellow divers with Seasport Divers  tell me it doesn’t get any better in all Hawaii. Seasport only runs excursions to Ni’ihau from late spring to early fall, after which the swells and currents get too strong.  Today is the last run of the season, and due to the surge, our entry and exit will be drift dives.  Everyone will be using Nitrox, allowing us to go longer and deeper than normal air.    It’s both my first drift and Nitrox dive, and I could hardly wait to get underwater. 
 
First site, the Lehua Ledge, sitting off the small island Lehua adjacent to the much larger Niihau.  Seconds in the water, I’m being stared at by a large monk seal, an endangered pinniped that lives around these waters.  As I descend, I encounter a huge school of colourful Pyramid Butterfly Fish.  Below me on the shelf, I see the shadow of a large Sand Bar shark, gracefully vanishing into the shadows.   Other highlights on the first dive: A Yellow Margin Moray, Triton’s Trumpet, a Crown of Thorns, and endemic Bandit Angels.  
 
The next dive is at a pinnacle known as Vertical Awareness.  My Nitrox is at 32%, and I am relieved that it tastes just like regular air.  I descend to 90ft, making my way around a large outcrop.  We see Pennant Butterflies, a Stout Moray, a huge Titan Scorpion Fish, an endemic Hawaiian Lionfish, and a cool red-striped nudibranch.  Although the water is a comfy 26°C, I pass through some cold thermoclines, and a powerful surge sweeps me along.  There’s a reason why this dive is seasonal.  The captain spots me and picks me up as divers continue to pop up all over the surface.
 
The best is saved for last, a drift dive to a spot called Pu’u Mu’u.   It’s my introduction to underwater caves, and while one diver ends his dive early with claustrophobia, I absolutely love it.   Reflective bubbles of air gather on the cave ceiling like mercury, as my flashlight reveals so much life and colour.  Black coral hangs from the walls, along with Cauliflower and Leather coral.   Deeper into the rock, Purple Spiny Lobster and big Tiger Cowry shells are amazing to see, as I ebb towards a series of spectacular swim-throughs.  
 
The swells pick up as we return to Poipu, even as Bottlenose and Spinner dolphins gather around the boat.   It will be another season before Seasport Divers resume this incredible dive, but there’s plenty of others on Kauai to keep them, and us, busy in the meantime.   Dives to Ni’ihau run twice a week late spring to early autumn. 

​A plane, another plane, a 4-hour drive, a small boat, a larger boat, another smaller boat, and at last my toes touch the squeaky-white beaches of Malapascua Island. It’s one of the premier diving spots in the Philippines, and with 7000 islands, this is a country that’s full of them.  The water is a balmy 28°C, visibility can reach up to 35m, and the Visayan Sea is teeming with life.   For recreational divers in love with big animals, there’s a much bigger hook:  Year-round, this is the only place in the world where you can dive with thresher sharks.
 
Popular with Asian and European divers, Malapascua Island has exploded in the last 10 years thanks to budget flights from Manila.   A Dutch couple founded Exotic Island Dive Resort, the first resort on the island, and are credited with discovering the shoal where the threshers gather. Everything – people, supplies, water – has to come in daily on boats, so I’m amazed with the resort’s exhaustive dining menu. I meet my sun-blonde dive-masters, Jules and Mimi, and they fill me on what I can expect.    
 
“Thresher sharks are different from other sharks.  They’re shiny, with big eyes and that giant tail. And they’re so sweet, I just want to pet them,” explains Mimi.  Adds Jules: “You have to respect them, but you can’t feel afraid.”    We suit up for a night dive to Lighthouse, just to warm up and enjoy the seahorses, mandarin fish, huge hermit crabs and flamboyant flatworms hanging around a nearby reef.  It’s only my second night dive, and to my delight, the inky ocean feels comfortable and safe.  Bio-luminescence surrounds me on my ascent, as I surface by the traditional wooden outrigger, under a bright crescent moon. I see why they called this Exotic Island.
 
It’s an early 5:30am start to Monad Shoal for my thresher shark encounter. I’m nervous: it’s not every day you swim with big animals, but what if they don’t show up?   The best time to see the sharks is at sunrise, when they are drawn to a natural cleaning station on the shoal located about 20 minutes boat ride from the resort.   Manta, devil and eagle rays, along with hammerheads, are seasonal visitors too.   We submerge and head to the edge of the shoal. Within minutes, Mimi’s flat hand is on her head.   A 6ft thresher comes into view, appearing out of the depth below us.   Its distinctive tail looks like an Ottoman sword.   There’s barely time to register before another appears, and another.  Judging Jules’ reaction, I’ve stumbled upon a bumper day on the shoal.  During our hour-long dive, we count about a dozen threshers.   One circles back and eyes me out curiously. That moment instantly converts me into a lifelong shark diver. 
 
Back on the banka, the traditional outrigger, there’s huge smiles on the faces of a dozen divers. “It was an effort not to see a shark today,” laughs Mimi.  At this remarkable spot in a remarkable country, nobody is going home disappointed.

Cold water diving is a different experience from the tropics: not better or worse, just different.  Fresh off Papua New Guinea, Hawaii and the Philippines, it was time to see for myself, and fortunately, I happen to live near one of the best places in the world to do it.    The waters off the coast of Vancouver, where I live, are renowned for their excellent diving.  Perhaps not as mind-blowing as sites further up the inlet off Vancouver Island - home to giant octopus and huge wrecks - but certainly a great place to start.
 
Greg McCracken’s Ocean Quest dive shop provided dry suits with all the trimmings.  Greg was our cold-water divemaster, and he’s one of the top instructors in Western Canada.   We hopped aboard Topline, the flagship vessel of Sea Dragon Charters.  Everyone on board, including experienced pros, sang nothing but praises for the large, comfortable boat.  There was plenty of space for gear and squeezing into those dry suits.
 
As I descended my first dive at a site called Pinnacle, I was amazed how comfortable I felt in my suit, and also how buoyant I was.  Visibility was pretty murky until we hit a ledge about 15 metres down and holy moly…a forest of huge, white plumose anemone exploded to create a complete otherworldly experience.  Thousands of brittle stars pulsed on the rock floor.  Massive cucumbers, starfish, nudibranchs…it was all there.  Greg explained that everything you’ll find in the waters of British Columbia is pretty much the biggest in the world.
 
Second dive was Halkett’s Wall, along the sheer rock face that descends off Gambier Island, one of dozens of islands that dot the waters off Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay.   Descending 18 metres (the rock wall goes down about 70 metres) I encounter rockfish, ling cod, various sculpins, cloud and chimney sponge, and a curious quillback rockfish. Jurassic-like orange sunflower starfish are as big as dining room tables, and a true feast for the eyes.
 
If you’re nervous about cold water diving, don’t be.  I found my dry suit easy to operate and maintain buoyancy. Definitely learn how to operate a dry suit and get certified before jumping in.  My two dives introduced me to just a fraction of what’s on offer in the waters off Vancouver.  The local community are friendly and supportive (this is Canada, after all), and you can’t ask for better instructors than Ocean Quest.  Sea Dragon charters run year-round from Horseshoe Bay, about 20 minutes from downtown Vancouver. 

More great dives to come...

​“Swimming with whale sharks” was always high up my bucket list, and in the space of two months, I did it twice: first in West Papua, Indonesia with my son, and then off the coast of La Paz with my daughter.  Very different experiences, with very different kids, and I’d bet very different whale sharks too.  The largest fish in the sea was utterly unbothered by our presence, and in both cases, conservation was front and center.   As with all ticks on a bucket list, as soon as it’s done, there’s a feeling of elation, followed by a strange emptiness, an exhaustion, a hole in the dream web. The experience itself is never quite how you imagine.   The first swim was sudden, taking advantage of proximity and timing.  The second was accompanied by cold, dark water and limits on time because we had to get two scuba dives in with sea lions (as one does).  It’s never how you imagine, but it’s exactly how it should be.  
 
It takes about a day or two for the spiders of the imagination to get spinning on the dream web, and we quickly move onto the next dream.  Take it from me, it’s a rare soul who ticks it all off and says “I’m done.”   Nope, dreams are a game of whack-a-mole: the more you experience, the more you want to experience.  Tick three things off at the top, and four more will pop up at the bottom.   ​

The highlight of my first visit to Baja California was an off-grid visit to Camp Cecil on the sand dunes in Magdalena Bay.   It’s a lovely camp that will be re-built each year, with access to a coastal wilderness and a bay that’s famous for friendly, spy-hopping grey whales.  The meals, star gazing and sundowner cocktails on the beach were magical, and owners Bryan and Sergio pay attention to the small details that make a huge difference.   
 
Rancho Cacachilas is an agro-tourism, glamping, farming R&D and adventure tourism initiative with some heavy financial backing.   Sharing an opportunity to ride mules into the desert scrub, make goat cheese and visit bee hives with my daughter was educational, memorable, and the kind of hands-on escape kids love most.     My top-of-mind memories:  watching the galaxies with my daughter at Camp Cecil, cycling the Malecon at sunset, getting covered in bees at the hives, and riding into the hills at sunset.  
 
You can read my full report from La Paz at Canadian Geographic, and the fun video we made below. 

​One B down, cue up The Bahamas.   It’s my first visit to the islands, and taking advantage of spring break, my daughter joined me on a week-long visit to the Exumas.   It’s a chain of islands with the kind of water that defies description, not that I didn’t try in my story.  I first heard about the swimming pigs from my niece, and I would have loved to have brought her because the little piggies did not disappoint. Neither did the rock iguanas, although I didn’t expect the baby nurse sharks to steal my daughter’s heart more than the baby pigs.  This is my daughter, after all.  
Hydro-biking to the Lazy River with Darren Clarke was another big surprise.  Impossibly blue water, lemon sharks, and a strong current to lie back and float to a natural sand bar.   We jet-skied and ate conch, raced hermit crabs and hiked out in low tide.  Exuma, I’m told, is a world away from Nassau, and it’s all the better for it.   My top-of-mind memories:   floating the Lazy River, looking for starfish at low tide on Exuma Point, ripping around the yachts in Elizabeth Harbour with my daughter and the young son of our PR representative, hearing the giggles and feeling their joy. 
 
Check out my full Exuma report on Canadian Geographic, and another fun video that will only get better as the years pass.

​The final B of the season was Bermuda, my first visit to another island paradise, this time in the North Atlantic.   Just 2.5 hours from Toronto or New York, the British Overseas Territory was polished and affluent, reflecting the fact that 90% of its GDP comes from offshore banking (it also sits in the world’s top 10 GDP per capita).   It was a short visit to investigate the Bermuda Triangle for a Halloween story later this year, and it got a little spooky when my BermudAir flight disappeared in mysterious tornado and teleported into an alien world.  For some inexplicable reason, my freckles made me a king, and I spent a lifetime ruling over peaceful, loving subjects, before being catapulted back to the present day through a wormhole under the Bermuda sea mount.  It’s quite possible I made that all up, which is all you really need to know about the Bermuda Triangle.   Scuba diving the Cathedral and the wreck of the ill-fated Greek freighter Pelinaion are two of my best dives ever.   Not a lot of marine life, but fabulous topography and diving wrecks are always a blast.  Great company, incredible food, and doubtful my last visit to Bermuda.   My top-of-mind memories:  diving into the crystal, cool waters of the cave pool at Grotto Bay Beach Resort and Spa; melting into the wagyu steak flight at the Island Brasserie; wahoo ceviche; navigating underwater canyons in the Cathedral.    A full report will run in Canadian Geographic later this year.   

Ever since discovering the ease of filming and editing videos directly on my phone, I’ve been having a lot of fun with my ‘family travel videos.’   I’ve been making travel videos in one way or another since the earliest days of Youtube, including an early video that went viral and has over one million views (See The World's Most Dangerous Hike below).  At the time, I had no idea what I was doing on Final Cut Pro, but I was able to stitch something together with a good soundtrack to make something short, punchy and engaging.  These early travel videos led directly to my TV show, as my raggedy clips effectively auditioned me for the part, showing I was the genuine article.   Unfortunately, the quality of my early videos don’t stand up in our 4K Ultra HD world, but they’re still make me nostalgic about a very different time and place. 
 
The first video I ever made simply stitched together a bunch of lose clips I had collected on my 3 mega-pixel Pentax camera. 3 mega pixels back then was state of the art!  The soundtrack was Bedouin Soundclash’s When the Night, and it captured the lunacy and innocence of my 12-month modern gonzo journey. I called it: Something to Make You Dream: 

After Word Travels, our little TV show that was too fast and flashy for its time, I continued to produce dozens of little videos to add value to readers of my Canadian Bucket List and Global Bucket List book projects.   By the late 2010s, I was still cranking out dozens of videos for The Great Australian Bucket List, again to add value to the reader.  This idea of adding value and sharing stories across mediums continues today with my ‘Bucket Listed’ Canadian Geographic column, only the production has improved dramatically thanks to better smart phone/camera/editing technology.  It also helps that Youtube lets me soundtrack my videos with any song I choose, since they compensate the artists and I don’t use my channel to earn income (which might come back to haunt me, but probably not).  

As I tell my kids, I’m not a Youtuber, but I do have a Youtube channel, I do make Youtube videos, and I like them a lot.  Some don’t get much traffic, some hit a nerve (like the one above to accompany a column I wrote about Winnipeg’s Activate Games).  Most videos are the length of a single song (4–6 minutes) although sometimes we do so much it requires multiple tracks and a longer video, as in the case of Switzerland above.  I choose my favourite songs or something that just fits for the vibe of the journey.  Sometimes I look for local artists, as in the case of my videos from the Inca Trail below and on Italy's Amalfi Coast.  When a cut lands perfectly on the beat, I get the reward of a sweet little editing buzz.  Music has always aligned with travel, and the right song can imprint a moment forever. ​

​I’ve put together 3 videos this year, and they all came out particularly great.  My son explores Raja Ampat with Seatrek with the perfect song from Canadian artists Walk off the Earth.   My daughter and I had an adventure of a lifetime in Mexico's La Paz, and we just returned from paradise, namely Exuma in The Bahamas.  

As you can see, my kids always steal the show, and I imagine them watching these short videos one day with their own kids, amazed by what they got up to around the world.  Although who knows, maybe 4K video will be as grainy and low quality in the future as my early videos are today.  Maybe Youtube won't exist at all.  In my closet are old Super 8mm reels that my grandfather filmed more than 60 years ago.  I transferred them to DVR tape about 20 years ago, itself now an obsolete medium.   In the end, it's all about capturing memories and sharing stories across time and space, and having some fun in the process. 

If you enjoy my videos, subscribe to my channel.  Here's a few more I'm particularly proud of: 

Every skier at every ski resort has faced the same conundrum: where do you find the best runs? In a resort like Whistler Blackcomb, with its 8,171 acres of skiable terrain, 270+ trails, 36 lifts, and 16 bowls, the choices are overwhelming, and analysis paralysis is a real thing. Standing in the line-up for the gondola at Creekside on a powdery Friday morning, I overhear the conversations of skiers and boarders planning the day’s attack. Opinions are floating around like the falling snow, with the debates continuing inside the gondola, all a variation of: “we could go here, or we could go there.” Or, you could keep things simple, easy, and just follow one of the Wonder Routes.
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To celebrate its 60th Anniversary, Whistler Blackcomb has launched a curated network of seven Wonder Routes to help guests of all abilities navigate the best of both mountains. The premise is simple: visit the website, download (or copy and paste) the suggested itinerary onto your phone, start at the first step, and let it guide you forward. The genius of this idea is evident by the enthusiastic response we receive when we tell people about it in the gondola and on various chairs. It’s all self-guided, so you don’t have to book anything in advance or pay anything more. What’s more, you can tackle the Wonder Routes by the letter, or amend, edit, and reference them as a starting point. With conditions clearing up, our group of two adults and two kids decided to go for the views first, with the aptly named: Top of the World.

From Roundhouse Lodge, the Top of the World Route guides us to the Peak Express where we exit the chair to a panoramic view. Some skiers are obsessed with powder and thrills, others with the natural outdoor spectacle. On a hike, I’m always telling my daughter to stop and smell the pine trees as opposed to running to the trailhead. Now at the top of Whistler Mountain, I encourage her to stop and smell the alpine views. We head down Matthews Traverse to Burnt Stew, connecting onto Jeff’s Ode to Joy—two greens and a blue ushering us to Symphony Express. It’s another chair up high into the peaks and a gorgeous connection of runs to the bottom of Harmony Express. Instead of debating where to go and what run to take, we let the 3-4 hour Wonder Route take the lead, sending us to the Peak 2 Peak Gondola and over to Blackcomb Mountain, where we take the easy Expressway to 7th Heaven Express and conclude our first Wonder Route with a hot lunch of poutine and Thai. The whole experience was efficient, easy, and wondrously devoid of FOMO.  

​The Après Route starts from Blackcomb and hits all the patios and lodges. The Glade Stashes Wonder Route guides you into the best tree runs, like Gnarly Knots, Gun Barrels, Outer Limits, and Raptors Ride off the 7th Heaven Express. This one is for advanced skiers eager to chase down black and double-black diamonds. Also for experienced skiers and boarders is the Gold Medal Route, which visits slopes and runs used during the 2010 Winter Olympics and 2025 Invictus Games. Kicking off the new 8-person Fitzsimmons Express lift, connect onto the Garbanzo Express to access the Dave Murray Downhill, which hosted the Olympic Men’s Downhill competition as well as the Super G course. Above the Timing Flats, look out for individual signs honouring gold medal winners from the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

For advanced skiers with 6-8 hours on their hands, the Alpine Sampler keeps things above the trees and in the bowls. You’ll take on legendary runs like Spanky’s Ladder, Overbite, and Garnet Bowl. It’s an epic day out. For our part, we decided to go with the all-green Family Certified Route as well as the more challenging Super Blues. With the flexibility of the routes, we figured we might as well enjoy the best of both worlds, linking the blue Cloud 9 to the green Expressway before taking the Peak 2 Peak back to Whistler (scoring the glass-bottom car with our timing) and continuing down Ego Bowl through the Enchanted Forest to the bottom of Emerald, before concluding our big Whistler ski day with a lovely run called Pony Trail to the top of the Creekside Gondola. At this point, the kids were committing mutiny for hot chocolate, so we downloaded, returned our rentals at Can-Ski Creekside, and rewarded them with extra marshmallows.

The Wonder Routes removed a lot of the guesswork, providing much-needed direction that we quickly came to trust and enjoy. Along the way, we discovered new sections of Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, and the kids enjoyed the treasure hunt of finding and completing both routes. Here’s hoping more routes are added in the future for different scenarios, like a Powder Route, a Surprise Route, or a Have-it-All Route. Maybe other mountains will get inspired to create their own Wonder Routes too. 
 
Click here for the latest conditions on Whistler-Blackcomb
Click here for more family-friendly activities on Whistler

This week I was interviewed by CBC Radio's Matt Galloway on The Current about flying: why people hate it, and how we got here.

Fact is, somewhere between the check-in counter and 35,000 feet, people often lose their minds. A fast-moving, crammed, pressurized cabin – not to mention the process of checking in and making your way through the theatre of security screening – is a lot to deal with.

As I discussed with Matt, there was a time when flying was aspirational, not transactional. It wasn’t just about cramming bums on seats and cutting costs by eliminating the free nuts. People dressed up to fly in suits and hats, and gourmet meals were served with tablecloths. Those days are long gone. The U.S. Transportation Secretary recently made the news with a cringe-inducing statement suggesting people should dress up again and return to this Golden Age of Flying, transferring the blame for airline incidents onto passengers instead of the system they’re put through.

Airline security is an absolute farce. There’s little consistency, we’re still removing shoes decades after one lunatic hatched a loony plan, and in some countries (mostly the USA), the TSA treats passengers with the respect of cattle in line at the abattoir. Various studies and trials have repeatedly shown the entire safety screening process to be ineffective at actually stopping a motivated passenger from getting onboard to do harm. Security theatre adds some reassurance, but a whole lot more stress and anxiety. I recently saw a mother arguing with airport security in Toronto about travelling with bottles of pumped breast milk. The baby was right there, but the bottles were over 100 ml, so it was clearly not milk but an explosive substance that would destroy the plane (likely detonated from a diaper).

All this stress chews people up. We become impatient, agitated, annoyed. Then throw in flight delays, poor communication, time changes, crying babies, and missed connections. Cram everyone on the plane and the real miracle is that the vast majority of people manage to keep it together.

The passenger in front of me is farting. One ripper after another. We can all smell it, but we can’t do anything about it. I put my nose in my shirt and smell my body odour, which isn’t great on a long flight but is better than the purple haze wafting over the seat. We’ve all had the restless kid kicking the back of the chair. My daughter is one of those kids. When we fly, I spend a great deal of time slapping her knees down as she contorts in her seat, and meeting the glare of the passenger in front of her. There are other challenges:

• The Recliner vs. The Knee Defender
• The Armrest Duel
• The Overhead Bin Squeeze
• The Oblivious Reading Light
• The Fart Monster

Psychologists call it deindividuation, a fancy term for: “I don’t know anyone here, and nobody knows me, so I’m going to behave however I damn well please.”

This kind of anonymity removes social consequences, but unfortunately, it doesn’t remove social impact. Flight attendants – one of the most under-appreciated professions, along with teachers and bus drivers – have to manage all this without it boiling over. When it does, planes are forced to land and police are called in. If that’s never happened to you (and it’s never happened to me, despite the prodding at the start of the CBC interview), you can credit a flight attendant. They’re heroes, these people. We should treat them as such.