In most of my stories, I try to keep the “I” to a minimum – better to let the places I visit take center stage than go on about myself.  But I had to make an exception with this story.  Last year I was married in Jamaica, on a beautiful stretch of Negril’s seven-mile beach.  Turns out there’s a huge market for destination wedding stories.  I couldn’t resist.

Wedded Bliss in Jamaica

Remy Scalza, Postmedia News

In terms of spiciness, the Scotch bonnet pepper is about 30 times as hot as your average jalapeno – which probably explains why I’m sweating.

The jerk sauce at Best in the West Jerk Chicken Bar, a thatch-roofed shack alongside the main drag in Negril, Jamaica, is pretty much all Scotch bonnet peppers. I reach for a Red Stripe to douse the flames and pull my chair closer to the bar. Outside, sheets of tropical rain are falling, turning the dirt parking lot into a big mud puddle. “‘Bout time,” the bartender says, cracking open a beer for himself. “We need a break from de heat.” He’s right. It’s been 29 Celsius all week in Negril: gloriously hot and cloudless. There is, however, one problem with the rain. I’m getting married in 90 minutes on the beach. Just then, the wind picks up. Big drops whip sideways into the little jerk shack and sizzle when they hit the grill.

Couples choose to have a destination wedding for lots of reasons. It’s a chance to spend a whole holiday with family and friends, instead of just a hectic few hours. Guest lists tend to be smaller and costs lower. You get a vacation out of it. But paramount among the reasons we decided to tie the knot on the beach was the stress factor, or lack thereof. There’s an unwritten law that wedding anxiety is inversely proportional to distance from home and availability of umbrella drinks. This was important for us. My wife, Stephanie, was born without the Bridezilla gene. Aisle runners and wedding favours and matching boutonnieres don’t keep her up at night. And I’d be lying if I said I knew what a boutonniere was before this all started. So an island wedding seemed to make sense. It’s hard to sweat the small stuff when you’re sipping a banana daiquiri, feet in the sand, a few thousand miles removed from real life.

Of course, when it comes to the quintessential stress-free getaway, there’s still no place quite like Jamaica.

Click here to read the rest on The Province website.

It’s that time of year again.  While Vancouver drowns in drizzle, the mountains that tower above the city get walloped with dozens of feet of snow.  I trekked up to nearby Cypress Mountain to partake in that most Canadian of rites, igloo building.  Turns out it’s much harder and wetter than it looks.  But the end product is still pretty cool.  I wrote about the experience for the Sydney Morning Herald.  And here’s a short video.

An ice place you have here

Remy Scalza; Special to the Sydney Morning Herald

Chilled from a day in the snow, worn out from hours of shovelling and stacking snow blocks, we worm our way into the tunnel of the igloo one after another. The wind’s howl mutes to a low hum. The day’s grey light goes black. I follow the pair of boots in front, crawling in towards the glimmer of light ahead.

The boots belong to Michael Harding, igloo evangelist. An outdoor guide with baby-blue eyes and snow-white hair, Harding has raised untold hundreds of igloos in this corner of western Canada. “They’re warmer than tents,” he’d explained earlier this morning as we climbed into the back country of the mountains outside Vancouver in his late-model Nissan Pathfinder. “They’re soundproof. They’re practically cozy.”

I’ve joined him and another guide for a one-day crash course in igloo basics, dragging along a friend from Vancouver for this most Canadian rite of passage. Not that I’m planning an assault on K2 any time soon. But even for armchair adventurers, there’s just something about an igloo.