Photo credit: Remy Scalza

Whistler, Canada, roughly two hours outside of Vancouver, has a reputation for being one of North America’s top ski towns. A pair of glacier-capped mountains draws skiers and snowboarders from around the world for incredibly long and – in some cases – incredibly challenging runs. Not surprisingly, Whistler is also incredibly expensive. The lift ticket alone is more than $100. Throw in accommodation and restaurants – generally geared toward well heeled international visitors – and a weekend on the slopes with the family can easily set you back a few thousand dollars. I tried to find a cheaper way to experience Whistler, leaning heavily on advice from the local ski and snowboard bums. 

Whistler’s Slopes and Après-Ski Charms, the Cheap Way

By Remy Scalza for The New York Times
Published Feb. 25, 2015
(For the online version of the article on The New York Times website, click here)

Seven little words sure to warm any frugal heart: “Sir, you’ve been upgraded from your yurt.”

A few weeks back, in a bid to cut costs on a ski trip to Whistler, the ritzy Canadian resort town near Vancouver, I had booked one of the cheapest options I could find: a yurt. For the uninitiated, a yurt is kind of like a big tent, but with a wood floor and actual beds. This one, at a private campground and R.V. park outside town, was going for 99 Canadian dollars a night ($80 at 1.23 Canadian dollars to the U.S. dollar), not exactly dirt cheap but a relative steal considering hotel rooms were starting at twice as much. I’d bring a sleeping bag, I told myself. There was a little stove inside to keep warm. It would be just like camping — glamping even.

But as I stepped out of my car in Whistler to a light snow and chilly breeze, I was having second thoughts about spending a weekend of subzero nights sleeping, for all intents and purposes, in the great outdoors. So when the front desk at the Riverside Resort campground explained that my yurt wasn’t ready and I’d been upgraded at no cost to a mini cabin — a handsome little red-cedar number with a bathroom, queen bed, electricity and heat — I didn’t protest. There’s a point when frugality yields diminishing returns, and I was starting to think a yurt in winter might be past that point.

But, for travelers on a tight budget, Whistler does demand some extreme measures. Most ski towns are pricey. Whistler is in a league of its own, a likely consequence of being named North America’s top resort for most of the last 20 years by a bevy of glossy ski magazines, not to mention hosting an Olympics a few years back. (It was also the subject of a recent 36 Hours column by The Times, which highlighted some of its less frugal charms.) Yes, the skiing is extraordinary: two separate mountains (Whistler and Blackcomb); 8,000-odd acres of skiable terrain; a mile-long vertical drop on the longest of runs. But none of that comes cheap. (I should note, however, that the recent free fall of the Canadian loonie means international visitors do get substantial savings in the exchange.) An adult, full-day lift ticket, which just gets you on the slopes, is 119 Canadian dollars (15 dollars less if you buy in advance online). On my budget, that meant I’d be able to afford one day of skiing, at most, over the weekend, and I’d need to scrimp and save to manage even that.

Fortunately, while Whistler does attract its share of international high rollers, it’s also home to a sizable and decidedly different demographic: young, seasonal employees perpetually strapped for cash, many on work visas from Australia or Britain, who know how and where to find deals. To get the lowdown, I dropped my things at the cabin and headed back into town to meet a friend of a friend.

“When you’re making minimum wage, you make every dollar count,” explained my drinking companion, Jonny, a 19-year-old Justin Bieber look-alike who came to Whistler two years ago from England to teach skiing and snowboarding. His shirt read, “All I care about is snowboarding … and maybe 3 people and beer,” a claim confirmed by our conversation. In quick succession, I learned his views on where to find the cheapest pitchers of beer (Creekbread, a pizza joint outside the village), the cheapest shots (Three Below, a bar under a movie theater) and which clubs hosted discounted “locals’ nights” during the week.

Eventually, I pressed Jonny for a non-alcohol-related tip. “Well, there’s nature,” he said and gave me directions to the Whistler Interpretive Forest, a 7,500-acre spread with plenty of trails, just a short drive south of town. A few minutes later, I was hiking my way through a thick swath of towering Douglas fir and Western red cedar trees, boughs draped with hanging moss. A mile on, the trail opened to a wobbly suspension bridge strung above the Cheakamus River, a ribbon of bright turquoise — that luminous glacial hue you get only in mountain country — threading through a frosty white canyon. It was something straight out of an enchanted forest, and I had the scene all to myself.

Chilled from the walk, I set my sights on getting into a hot tub, one way or another. My little cabin backed onto a gorgeous outdoor spa – a complex of hot and cold pools, Finnish saunas and steam rooms set on manicured grounds. Unfortunately, the price of admission turned out to be 58 dollars. But across the street at the municipalMeadow Park Sports Center, run by the local park board, I discovered that access to a hot tub, sauna and steam room would cost me just 8.25 dollars. I happily shelled out an extra 3 dollars for a towel and a locker token.

Being a Canadian community center, Meadow Park was actually nicer than a lot of private clubs I’d been to. I made my way past the indoor hockey rink and the squash courts to the pool area, which, as promised, had a nice big hot tub in the corner. When it got a little too crowded with 12-year-olds, I retreated to the steam room, where I made friends with a young snowboarder convalescing for the season after suffering a broken leg. “Mind if I add a little eucalyptus?” he asked, then sprinkled a few drops of his own oil onto the steam vent — a frugal spa trick worth remembering.

The next day dawned rainy, so I decided to defer hitting the slopes and explore instead. To get a sense of Whistler’s past — before the resort, before even the first trappers and prospectors set up shop in the late 1800s — I drove to the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Center, a museum dedicated to the history of the region’s indigenous population, tucked among a cluster of five-star hotels on the village edge (at 18 dollars, a modest splurge but a worthwhile one). Heavy carved wooden doors opened to a big open room filled with full-size totem poles and cedar canoes.

On a guided tour, I learned that the Squamish and Lil’wat peoples had inhabited the areas around Whistler for thousands of years. We popped into full-scale models of an underground pit house and a huge cedar-timbered longhouse. Exhibits showed off traditional goat’s-wool blankets and nifty waterproof hats woven from cedar bark, essential accessories back in the day. My favorite piece was a giant, menacing mask of Kalkalalh, the wild witch woman of the woods, who ate children and had a serious case of bed head, wild hair splaying everywhere.

The rain hadn’t let up, so I decided to go for a drive. While Whistler is a slickly manufactured ski resort masquerading as a quaint mountain town, the nearby community of Pemberton really is a quaint mountain town, home to a few thousand back-to-the-land types, hard-core adventure seekers, farmers and retirees. After a harrowing ride — freezing rain had turned the winding Sea-to-Sky Highway into a bobsled run — I eased down to a grid of streets set in the shadow of some dizzying peaks. Just off the main drag, a line of cars was snaking its way up to the local high school. I pulled off to investigate.

Inside the gym — home of the Pemberton Red Devils — a craft fair was in progress, evidently the event of the season. I worked my way through the masses, past rows of folding tables packed with homemade preserves, church bake sale cookies, local alpaca blankets and cure-all salves sold by members of the nearby Mount Currie Indian Band. I ended up buying a few jars of homemade salsa for 4 dollars each from a local canning enthusiast, who upsold me on a wool cap with ear flaps that had been knit by her mother. “Perfect for wearing underneath a hardhat,” she said.

Farther up the road, in an unlikely spot in an industrial park, I found what just might be the country’s only certified-organic potato vodka distillery. “Pemberton’s known for potatoes, and we go through at least 100,000 pounds a year,” said Tyler Schramm, the distiller, pouring me a sample of his trademark spirit inside the tasting room, essentially a cinder-block and sheet-metal shack. Afterward, we poked into the distillery itself, where a batch of organic potato absinthe was being bottled, and sprigs of wormwood, the spirit’s key ingredient, were spread out to dry. With a long drive ahead of me, I decided against a taste, but I couldn’t resist picking up a handsome, hand-labeled bottle of potato gin on the way out (45 dollars, which is in no way frugal, but it was worth every penny).

Back in Whistler, the lifts had closed for the day, sending a flood of skiers onto the streets for après-ski sustenance. On a tip, I skipped the usual bars and pubs and headed to the kind of place budget travelers rarely dare to tread, a fine-dining fixture called Bearfoot Bistro. Inside, there’s a grand piano in the dining room, a walk-in 20,000-bottle wine cellar and prix fixe menu pushing 100 dollars a head. But from 3 to 7 p.m. daily, they also have one of the best après-ski deals in town: a half-dozen local Vancouver Island oysters, served with fresh horseradish and red wine mignonette, for 10 dollars. I felt a bit underdressed in my muddy boots and ski jacket, but I found a seat at the bar and started happily slurping away.

Alas, one cannot live on oysters alone. Whistler is sorely lacking the kind of homey hole-in-the-walls where budget travelers usually find their best meals. But back along the main pedestrian stroll, a sandwich board outside a place called El Furniture Warehouse caught my eye: “All Food — $4.95.” It was a risk, but I was hungry.

Inside, the Warehouse was much as advertised: dark and low-ceilinged with young ski and snowboard bums packed into every possible corner. But my “Works Burger” (Alberta beef, maple bacon and Cheddar for the promised price of 4.95 dollars) held its own against pub burgers that cost three times as much, and 5-dollar Kokanee drafts (British Columbia’s equivalent of Budweiser or Coors) made the pounding club mix inside easier to bear. To cap off the night, I stopped in at the Dubh Linn Gate, a nearby pub with a bit more atmosphere than the standard Irish knockoff. No cover charge and a foot-stomping fiddle band called Team Hewitt meant the place was packed. I squeezed onto the dance floor, a sea of swirling flannels, just in time for the start of a Celtic treatment of “Folsom Prison Blues.”

The next morning, the skies were still threatening rain, but it was now or never for skiing. I ponied up for the lift ticket, shuffled into the Village Gondola — the main route up Whistler Mountain — and hoped for the best. Inside, two snowboarders from Washington were literally fidgeting in their seats — “super stoked,” they said, for their first runs of the year.

Then, just as I was reconciling myself to a damp day on the slopes, the gondola broke through the low clouds, emerging on the other side to an unexpectedly gorgeous vista. Row after row of jagged, snowcapped mountains — hidden from sight all weekend — spiked upward against a backdrop of blue sky and puffy white clouds. Above it all glowered the fang of Blackcomb Mountain — 8,010 feet high and sheathed in glacier.

I got out of the gondola a half-hour later, the better part of a mile above Whistler. While the snow up top wasn’t exactly fresh powder (uncommonly warm temperatures this season have made for challenging skiing conditions), the sun was shining, and the uninterrupted panorama of peaks and bowls was enough to banish any buyer’s remorse over my ticket. Whistler isn’t a beginner’s mountain, which meant I spent most of the afternoon on the easiest, green runs. Still — in fear-induced adrenaline alone — I got my money’s worth. Next time I think I’d even make the sacrifice and stay in that yurt, if it meant an extra day on the mountain.

Photo credit: Remy Scalza

As a travel journalist, you’re always a bit of an imposter. You’re generally tasked with going into a place you know very little about, spending a few days there and then writing about it as if you’re an expert. If you do your research and rely heavily on local sources for input it’s possible to pull this off … at least some of the time.  But recently I faced the opposite dilemma. I was asked to write an article about a place I knew almost too much about – New York’s Hudson Valley.  I grew up in the region. I still return every year. The challenge suddenly became how to compress a lifetime of knowledge about a place into just a thousand or so words, not to mention how to write a story that would resonate not just with outsiders but with people in the region itself. 

A Midwinter Playground in the Hudson Valley

By Remy Scalza for The New York Times
Published Feb. 11, 2015
(For the online version of the article on The New York Times website, click here)

On a cold January night, all seven tables inside the Grange, a restaurant housed in a 1903 former post office in the Hudson Valley town of Warwick, were full. In dutiful farm-to-fork fashion, the evening’s specials, written on a big chalkboard on one wall, were tagged with the names of local farms: Hudson Valley Cattle Company beef, Hillery Farms chicken, Meadowburn Cheddar. Exposed beams and brick and a waitress with thick black glasses and hair done up in a head scarf completed the scene — a tableau common in so many city restaurants but somewhat less expected here, in what used to be my humble little hometown.

Yet as I discovered on a recent trip back to my Hudson Valley roots, times have changed. What haven’t, by and large, are the prices. Despite its proximity to New York, this historic swath of the lower Hudson Valley is still a bargain, especially in the winter low season. A local food movement, atmospheric inns dating back hundreds of years and a formidable expanse of state parks and ski mountains make for a frugal paradise within easy reach of one of the country’s most expensive cities.

Dinner at the Grange (roasted cauliflower soup with house-made croutons; a flatiron steak from a ranch a few towns over) was excellent. But since the restaurant had yet to get a liquor license, after paying the check I was primed for a drink. Luckily, my hotel for the night, just a mile or so down the road, had both a bar and an extensive wine list.

Built in the 1800s as a private residence, Chateau Hathorn has a turret roof, a grand ballroom done up in mahogany and oak, and a 12,000-bottle walk-in wine cellar. Restored in recent decades after an unfortunate stint as a dude ranch, it still needs a bit of work but otherwise oozes great spooky-mansion ambience. A room with its own fireplace cost me $135, not exactly frugal but worth the splurge.

I dropped my bags upstairs before heading back down to the hotel restaurant for a nightcap. Up at the big hardwood bar, I ordered a nice Bordeaux and polished off a plate of old-fashioned oysters Rockefeller ($14.50) before climbing the creaking stairs and making my way down a long, dark hallway to my room.

The next day, I set out for Orange County’s original shopping mecca, though by no means its best known. That distinction belongs to Woodbury Common, the sprawling, high-end outlet mall that attracts 13 million visitors a year. Just a few miles up Route 17, however, is the antithesis of that anonymous outlet experience — the traditional crafts village of Sugar Loaf.

Along a single street lined with 18th-century houses, a dozen or so local artists — goldsmiths, soap makers, wood carvers, glassblowers, leather workers — make and sell wares out of their homes. I stopped into the Candle Shop, where one of the village’s craft pioneers still lives and works.

“Forty-six years here — it’s a lifetime, man,” said Peter Lendved, who had a graying ponytail and spoke in long digressions about Sugar Loaf’s past: royalist refuge during the American Revolution, secret Underground Railroad stop, hippie hot spot during the ’60s arts and crafts renaissance. As I was leaving, he discreetly wrapped one of his candles — which go for $9 and come in just one, vanilla-based scent — in a piece of tissue paper and handed it to me as a gift, wishing me the best on my life’s journey.

After stocking up on hand-cured soaps and loose-leaf teas, and making a quick pit stop in the nearby Warwick Valley Winery (great ciders, but skip the wine), I was ready to get outdoors. The low, rounded spine of the Appalachian Mountains cuts through Orange County, which makes for great hiking in summer and decent skiing in winter, at least when nature cooperates.

As I drove down a dirt road to Mount Peter, a family-run ski center in Warwick, the ground was ominously bare, but a haze of artificial snow hung over the mountain. Opened in 1936, partly to serve as a backdrop for Macy’s to show off winter fashions, Mount Peter claims to be the oldest operating ski mountain in the state and — lucky for me — was an early adopter of snow-making technology.

Though ski pros are likely to be underwhelmed — maximum vertical drop on Peter’s dozen or so runs is just a few hundred feet — for a beginner like me, the modest slopes were a perfect fit. And the price is right: Weekday lift tickets are $25 and rentals are just $30. I hopped on the Hailey’s Comet chairlift and rode to the peak, watching below as little kids snowplowed their way straight down the mountain.

I spent the afternoon working on my turns while soaking up the small-mountain charm: no lift lines, friendly ski instructors who volunteered pointers, hamburgers in the lodge for the throwback price of $4.95. At the end of the day, I watched the sun set over a rolling patchwork of farm fields and hardwood forests, before shimmying down Dynamite — a black diamond, by local standards at least — on my last run.

The perfect après-ski spot is just down the mountain, in a home that served as a Revolutionary War-era iron furnace. The 1760 Iron Forge Inn is best known locally as a fine-dining spot, serving classic dishes like lamb loin and duck breast in its formal dining rooms. But the basement has been converted into a casual taproom with equally good but much cheaper bar food.

I ducked to avoid hitting the rough-hewed beams overhead and squeezed into a chair near the open fireplace. Between the fieldstone foundations and antique muskets on the walls, it wasn’t hard to picture patriots quaffing a few pints here back in the day, after routing some redcoats. A half rack of slow-roasted pork ribs ($16) later, I stepped out into the crisp, dead-quiet country night, full moon overhead. My clothes would smell like campfire for days.

Not wanting to miss a view of the Hudson River itself, I got an early start the next morning for Bear Mountain State Park. Hundreds of miles of trails wind through thousands of acres of coastal forest, while a grand old 1915 inn and outdoor skating rink remain reliable draws. A section of the Appalachian Trail climbs steeply to the park’s namesake peak. From the 1,305-foot summit (about an hour’s hike up), I had a clear view of the Hudson River far below, curling its way south all the way to the distant Manhattan skyline.

But this part of the Hudson Valley has its sophisticated side as well. From Bear Mountain, I headed just across county lines to Dia:Beacon ($12 admission), a contemporary art gallery opened in 2003 in a rambling old Nabisco box factory down by the river, not far from a Metro-North commuter rail station.

Inside, the art is minimalist, challenging and, evidently, extremely popular. Throngs of patrons wandered amid heaps of scrap metal, canvases painted pure white and other masterpieces by avant-garde lions like Andy Warhol, Richard Serra and the German painter Blinky Palermo. For modern art greenhorns, however, the building itself is likely to be the star attraction — an enormous industrial space flooded with soft natural light.

Main Street in the town of Beacon offered less abstract charms. Rows of ornate, century-old brick buildings, packed with bookstores, cafes and an uncommon number of bakeries and restaurants, climb a hill above the Hudson. Once a factory town, Beacon seems to have weathered industrial decline and come out the other side with its soul intact — no small feat in this part of New York.

At the end of Main Street, the Fishkill Creek thunders down Beacon Falls on its way to join the Hudson. On a chilly night, a line had formed at the Hop, whose twin focus on craft beer and locally sourced cuisine draws big crowds. I squeezed into the last seat at the bar and ordered a flight of four local beers ($8) and the best brussels sprouts — by a wide margin — I’ve ever had (sautéed in duck fat, drizzled with apple cider syrup, topped with a slab of maple bacon, $14).

Mustachioed guys with growlers were elbowing in for refills. Stylish young couples with little children browsed the takeaway selection of Chimays. It was all starting to feel a bit too much like, yes, Brooklyn. But someone had put a sign above the bar: Hipsters Use Backdoor. And in the air was something a little too raw and gruff for Williamsburg. I knew I was home.

For the newspaper version of the article (with photos), click here. 

A few years ago, I did a story on the Calgary Stampede – a weeklong fair in Calgary, Alberta, with carnival rides, country music and plenty of rodeo. The best bull riders, bronc busters and barrel racers from around the world converge on Calgary to compete for millions of dollars in prize money in what amounts to rodeo’s Super Bowl. It was my first exposure to rodeo live and up close – violent, dangerous, in its own way beautiful.

Recently, Canadian Geographic invited me to cover a very different rodeo story. Each year for the last 60 or so years, the small farming town of Pincher Creek, Alberta (pop. 3685) has held its own rodeo. At stake is considerably less prize money than at the big Calgary Stampede. But the action and the people were, if anything, more exciting and more interesting. 

The Real Cowboys of Pincher Creek

By Remy Scalza for Canadian Geographic Travel
Published Summer 2014
(For the online version of the article on the Canadian Geographic website, click here.)

BEHIND THE RODEO GROUNDS on the edge of Pincher Creek, a small town in southwestern Alberta at the confluence of highways 6, 507 and 785, cowboys have improvised a locker room. Sitting in the grass, they tape themselves up for another ride, shoring up busted elbows and knees with Ace bandages. Steer wrestlers limber up with squats and jumping jacks, while saddle bronc riders put their saddles in the dirt and jerk back and forth in pantomime of the ride to come.

“It’s pretty hard to explain what it feels like to someone who’s never done it,” says Dustin Flundra, a native of Pincher Creek and, with three Canadian Saddle Bronc Championships to his credit, one of Canada’s more decorated rodeo cowboys. “When things are working, and you’re on a perfect bronc ride, it gets kind of addicting.”

Last night, when the stands here were empty and the stock was out to pasture, Flundra came home. He had been on the road all week, hopscotching between rodeos in Idaho, Washington, British Columbia and Montana. Sometime after dark, his Dodge pickup would have reached a familiar stretch of country at the base of the Rocky Mountains. With the window down, he would have smelled hay and earth. Fifty-metre wind turbines would have stood like ghostly sentinels, stirring in the cool air. Somewhere in the dark sea of fields would have been the lights of a small town, just a few streets set along a swiftly moving creek.

“I’ve probably been to 1,000 rodeos in the last 13 years, but this one is always special for me,” Flundra says. He’s squinting in the August sun now, thumbs hitched into his belt, framing an enormous buckle that reads Canadian Pro Rodeo Assoc. Saddle Bronc Champion. “This is my hometown rodeo. I know just about everybody here. They’ll all be watching.”

UNDERSTANDING THE PINCHER CREEK RODEO, held one weekend each summer for the last 61 years (and on and off well before that), begins with numbers. Pincher Creek has 3,685 residents. Most years, the rodeo fills all of its 1,000 seats. “It’s safe to say it’s the event of the season,” says Farley Wuth, curator of Pincher Creek’s Kootenai Brown Pioneer Village museum and unofficial town historian. Inside his office, shelves are crammed with copies of the Pincher Creek Echo newspaper dating back more than a century. After introducing himself, Wuth, who is stocky with a large moustache, hands me a book with the heft of a family Bible — the 984-page town history. “Labour of love and all that,” he says.

On a hot afternoon before the rodeo kicks off, he takes me out to Main Street, a binder of historical photos tucked under his arm. We walk past a two-screen movie theatre, a Canadian Legion, a Sears catalogue store, two Chinese restaurants, a liquor store and a Sobeys supermarket. Every few minutes, people slow their cars, wave and exchange a few words with Wuth, shielding their eyes from the bright sun with one hand.

“The first competitions date back to the 1890s,” he says, fumbling through his binder for a grainy, black-and-white shot of townsfolk in their Sunday best gathered for a chuckwagon race. “Then in the 1920s, we moved things to the high school over there.” Out on the street, one horse trailer after another rattles by bound for the new rodeo grounds on the edge of town. “You have to understand that some of the ranches around here have been in the same families for five or six generations,” he says. “Rodeo isn’t just some salute to the past. It’s our future.”

BACK AT THE GROUNDS, the smell of grilling burgers and manure hangs in the air. The stands are filling quickly. Seated shoulder to shoulder are old-time ranchers, faces lined from years in the sun; young girls in cowboy hats; bonnet-wearing Hutterites from the colony just outside town and Piikani First Nations members from the reserve up the road. Up at the 4-H concessions, long lines have formed for $1.25 ears of corn and cans of pop and shaved ice flavoured with syrups in neon shades. Little kids, cowboy hats sagging down to their noses, race along the grass in front of the stands, trying to lasso each other.

Rodeo, if you haven’t grown up around it, can seem spectacularly, sometimes shockingly, violent — for horse and bull and steer and calf and no less so for rider. The day starts with bareback. Cowboys try their best to stay on bucking horses for eight seconds: hard enough in itself, but in this case it’s without the benefit of a real saddle. One after another, the animals explode from the confines of their metal chutes. Heads lower, legs rocket back and — in a spasm of terror — all four hoofs clear the ground. It’s hard to believe their muscles and bones can stand the strain. It’s even harder to believe that someone could hold on.

I watch as one cowboy after another is whipped about like a rag doll. The lucky ones hang on until the buzzer. The rest are rudely unseated, flung high into the air only to crash back to the dirt, where they sit, stunned, then dust themselves off. One competitor breaks his leg early in the competition, writhes on the ground, and then is carried off by other cowboys who form a sling with their arms. What motivates bareback riders, steer wrestlers and bull riders to get up and get back on, over and over again, can be a mystery, even for them.

“For me, it’s just about the challenge, I guess,” explains Otys Little Mustache, a steer wrestler from Brocket, a community on the Piikani reserve. Little Mustache, who has shoulderlength black hair spilling from beneath his cowboy hat, is waiting his turn on the edge of the infield. With a broad smile, mirrored sunglasses and a Dodger-blue buttoned-up shirt (but no moustache of any size), he looks equal parts GQ model and cowboy.

“My dad used to steer wrestle, so it kind of runs in the family,” he says. “Only back then, it was hard for people to get a fair shot, you know.” Challenges led First Nations cowboys to form their own rodeo associations in the ’70s, and last year Little Mustache finished second at the Indian National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. Today, however, he’s nervous. “I went to the gym at 10 o’clock this morning just to get the jitters out,” he says.

Minutes later, the jitters don’t show. In a matter of seconds (4.3, to be precise), he has raced alongside a charging steer, leapt off his horse and landed on the animal’s shoulders. In one brutally graceful motion, he plants his heels, wrenches the steer’s horns 180 degrees clockwise and throws the nearly 230-kilogram animal on its back. Little Mustache raises both hands and pumps his fist. Friends and family in the beer tent are hollering and whistling. He collects himself, then breaks off at a trot to join in the celebrating.

DURING A LULL IN THE ACTION, I make my way through the stands, past a pen where enormous bulls glare from behind glassy brown eyes and down to a parking lot at the edge of the agricultural grounds. Inside a fifth-wheel trailer that serves as his home on the road and dressing room, Ash Cooper is anxious: his makeup has smeared. “You’ve got to put baby powder on or it will do that in the hot weather,” says Cooper, a rodeo clown who goes by the stage name CrAsh and wears oversized pants and suspenders with a red-and-white striped Where’s Waldo-style shirt. A former semi-pro hockey player from Saskatchewan, he came to clowning by accident 20 years ago. “I like the spotlight and I thought, ‘That looks like fun,’ ” he says. “Of course, it helped there was a shortage of clowns at the time.”

Cooper closes one eye and paints the lid blue, then repeats with the other. “You definitely don’t do it for the money. It’s the lifestyle you get hooked on.” A typical year sees him criss-crossing the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, performing on rodeo’s biggest stages, including Alberta’s own Calgary Stampede. “But it’s the little rodeos where you feel the crowd,” he says. “These people here remember jokes I made three years ago.” Before I leave, Cooper tells me to pay attention during an upcoming intermission, when he’ll put on a pair of stilts and do a backflip in the middle of the arena. “Broke my back doing that a few years ago, but it always gets the crowd going.”

This time, Cooper lands the flip without incident. Afterward, he sticks around to officiate something called a calf scramble. Two dozen six- to nine-year-olds stampede around the arena, trying to corner a pair of spooked calves and tug ribbons off their tails. With new bikes on the line, the animals don’t stand a chance, and two blonde-haired girls claim the prizes in less than 30 seconds.

The day’s few clouds have burned off now and bright sun bakes the dirt of the infield. Tie-down ropers lasso calves and bind their hooves in a blur, and ladies barrel racers on horseback thunder across the infield, long hair whipping from beneath their hats as they weave through hairpin turns around barrels. From the beer tent, the smells of barbecue — smoke, pork and corn on the cob — rise and sail on the breeze.

It’s near the end of the day when I find Flundra, the hometown favourite, waiting his turn behind the chutes. For someone about to get on a 540-plus-kilogram hunk of tense, rippled muscle named Chicken Hawk, he’s surprisingly calm. “Rodeo’s been good to me. It’s had highs and lows, but everything in life comes with that,” he says. Lately, however, bumps and bruises have been starting to add up. “Tore a meniscus, tore an MCL, dislocated a fibula, broke an elbow, tore a ligament in my elbow, had my head stepped on and ended up with a severe concussion,” he says, pausing to remember if he’s missed anything. “That’s just in the last three years. But doesn’t do you no good to sulk.”

Moments later, the crowd and announcers go quiet as Flundra settles into the saddle. His horse bashes at the steel siding with its hoofs, thrashing in the tight space. When the chute door finally swings open, the animal gives a pair of frantic bucks, hurtling onto the infield. Flundra’s head snaps back; the fringes of his chaps whip through the air. Hundreds of cowboy hats in the stands swivel in time, following each stutter and lurch across the dirt.

But the horse loses enthusiasm, slows and bucks lamely along the fence. Flundra holds on, but his score leaves him out of the running for top honours. “That’s how it works sometimes,” he explains afterward, disappointed but trying not to show it. “All you can do is get back in the truck and head down the road to the next one.”

The 61st annual Pincher Creek rodeo ends at 5 p.m. sharp. By 5:15, hundreds of cars have left the rodeo grounds, crawled along Main Street, paused at the stop sign at Christie Avenue and left the town centre. It’s still the same bright, hot Sunday, but now it’s quiet: no booming announcer’s voice or country music coming from the Horseshoe Pavilion. On Main Street, the two Chinese restaurants are closed. The movie theatre’s doors are locked. Those who aren’t on the highway to the next event are on their way home to make dinner and catch up on chores neglected all weekend because the rodeo was in town.

For the magazine version of the article, click here. 

I think everyone at some point dreams of doing an Africa safari: seeing lions, elephants, rhinos, giraffes – the whole Animal Crackers menagerie – up close and in person.  But if you start to research safaris online, you quickly discover that they’re extremely expensive, with a week-long trip for two often approaching the cost of a new car.  On a recent trip to Namibia, however, I was able to find a cheaper option – a self-drive, do-it-yourself safari.  It ended up being considerably less intimidating than it might sound.  I wrote about the highs and lows of the experience for The Wall Street Journal. 

An Affordable DIY Safari in Namibia

By Remy Scalza for The Wall Street Journal
Published Feb. 8, 2014
(For the online version of the article on The Wall Street Journal website, click here.)

ROADS IN ETOSHA National Park, a wildlife sanctuary in northern Namibia bigger than the state of New Jersey, are almost perfectly flat. There’s little in the way of traffic. Still, it’s not a great idea to read a map at the wheel.

My wife hollered, “Stop!” By the time I hit the brakes and our little rented Volkswagen skidded to a halt, we were 10 feet from a pair of enormous knees. The African bush elephant they belonged to flared his ears and turned one massive eye my way, clearly—and justifiably—annoyed.

The African safari of glossy-brochure fame—luxury lodges, expert guides, the whole Lion King menagerie hamming it up for photos—represents the trip of a lifetime to many travelers. It generally carries a price tag to match that status.

I went looking for something different, and easier on the bank account. I found it in Etosha.

The park sits in the arid northeastern corner of Namibia, a country whose features include parched plains and plateaus, jagged mountains and 100-story red sand dunes that unfold to the Atlantic Coast. Most of its 2.3 million citizens still live in small, tribal villages. Namibia has neither the traditional safari cred of neighboring South Africa nor anywhere near the tourist volume.

But Namibia is also one of Africa’s success stories in terms of stability, infrastructure and conservation. Since the country won its independence from South Africa in 1990, it has set aside nearly half of all its land as protected. Animals once threatened by poaching and habitat loss—including elephants, black rhinos and lions—have reappeared in record numbers.

Nowhere in Namibia is this profusion of wildlife more accessible than in Etosha, which is uniquely set up for independent (i.e., budget-minded) travelers. Its gravel roads are navigable with compact rental cars—no four-wheel drives required. State-run lodges inside the park offer comfortable accommodation at accessible prices (often ridiculously so). Meanwhile, wildlife clusters around more than 30 roadside watering holes, so anyone with a decent pair of binoculars and a $5 road map can track down the better part of the Big Five without a guide.

It does help to have a sense of adventure. At the main southern entrance to the park, a guard in a solitary hut took me through the safety briefing. “You must remain in the car at all times when on the roads,” she said, repeatedly. Considering the thousands of apex carnivores and multi-ton pachyderms roaming inside Etosha, I wasn’t inclined to argue.

Etosha means “great white place” in the language of one of its original inhabitants, Namibia’s Ovambo people. Its central feature is an enormous salt pan, which looks like an ocean that shimmers with heat waves instead of water. All kinds of megafauna come to the fringes to lick salt—lions, rhinos, giraffes, elephants, thundering herds of zebra and antelope. Because vegetation is sparse, even safari novices can spot normally reclusive animals.

Ten miles into the park, however, all we had seen were a few gangly springbok, little gazelles hardly more exotic than your average deer. To find out where the marquee predators were hiding, I made a quick detour to park headquarters, located in Okaukuejo camp, one of several gated rest compounds inside Etosha.

“Check the sightings book,” the receptionist said, barely looking up as she pointed to a tattered notebook near the door. I leafed through the equivalent of a safari cheat sheet, a detailed record of sightings by fellow travelers. The latest tip was less than an hour old: four elephants bathing at a water hole a few miles away.

When we rolled up a few minutes later, they were still knee-deep in the water, spraying and splashing, pulling long drafts from the pond with their trunks then blasting each other. A few dozen zebras waited in the wings, while a giraffe cautiously skirted the water’s edge. We were so close, I had to take the zoom lens off my camera to fit the animals in the frame.

Camps inside Etosha close their gates at sunset, which creeps up fast when you’re dashing from water hole to water hole. After a day on the road, we hustled to beat the sinking sun to Halali camp, our stop for the night, following a cloud of dust whipped up by other tardy drivers.

Operated by the Namibian government, Etosha’s camps generally don’t offer the private-plunge-pool luxury of other safari destinations. (The exception, Onkoshi camp, does not serve self-drive travelers.) But the lodging is far from bare-bones. In fact, the term “camp” is rather misleading.

Accommodation ranges from comfortable double rooms in low-slung lodges to private thatched-roof chalets perched above water holes. Camp restaurants serve rustic but exceedingly fresh food, with menus highlighting some of the same (non-endangered) sort of game seen in the park. Prices start at less than $75 a person per night—a 10th of what some of the private lodges outside the park charge.

Inside Halali, families gathered around campers; there were tidy bungalows and even a few bush chalets on a hillside. As safari camps go, it was more Holiday Inn than Hilton. But the rooms were immaculate, with hot water and air conditioning, and the dinner buffet was jammed with the kind of exotic meats—oryx, springbok, kudu and ostrich—adventurous eaters swoon over in big cities.

Not to mention the view, which was hard to beat. Before the light faded completely, we climbed to a protected ridge above a water hole. Below, two elephants, a mother and a very young calf, were drinking, their profiles silhouetted by an extravagantly red sky. I pulled a couple bottles of local Windhoek Lager from my backpack—not quite the classic safari sundowner of gin and tonic, but close enough.

The following days brought encounters with hundreds more elephants, zebras that blocked the road and stared at our car, giraffes bumping necks in elegant mating rituals and ostriches sunning with their wings spread, not to mention hordes of herbivores, from kudu to oryx. Each water hole along the way proved a separate stage, with a separate drama unfolding. Mainly, we had the show to ourselves, passing maybe a few dozen cars all week.

But, there remained the pressing matter of lions. While everyone I bumped into as we worked our way from camp to camp had seen them (one sightings-book entry: “LIONS HAVING SEX!!!”), we had struck out. For all the virtues of a DIY safari—the sense of discovery, the solitude, the savings—at times a guide would have been nice.

On the last morning in Etosha, I found our savior in the office at Namutoni camp, on the easternmost edge of the park. A whitewashed fort rising from the dry bush, Namutoni was built by German colonizers in 1902, promptly burned down by locals, then rebuilt with better defenses in 1906. Today it’s home to palm-fringed swimming pools where little kids splash and chatter in Afrikaans, and a steakhouse that serves game and decent sausages, the latter a culinary legacy of those colonizers.

In the camp office, I learned that the day’s guided group safaris—on which lion sightings are nearly guaranteed—were booked solid. I was getting desperate when I saw an off-duty guide on the couch, practically winking at me from behind a newspaper. A deal was quickly and quietly hammered out: $400 Namibian (about $40) for a two-hour private tour.

“We’ve had reports of a lioness with cubs,” said the guide, Samuel Hilundwa, who turned out to be a veteran tracker. “But it’s far. I’ll have to drive fast.” As we barreled down gravel roads, whizzing past flora and fauna, Mr. Hilundwa offered rapid-fire commentary: Giraffes get darker as they age, lions spend 20 hours a day napping, a herd of zebra is called a dazzle.

We were still lion-less an hour later when Mr. Hilundwa spotted a pair of trucks pulled to the side of the road. He braked, rolled down his window and shouted something in Afrikaans to the other drivers. “There! 11 o’clock,” he said, pointing furiously. I squinted into the distance, my one chance to spot a lion quickly slipping away.

Then I saw her racing through the grass, one terrifyingly oversize house cat. I could make out the rounded ears, the huge paws. The lioness slinked along, low to the ground. In the distance, a herd of springbok raised their heads, picked up the scent and bolted.

The lioness broke into a sprint. “She’s hunting,” Mr. Hilundwa said, smiling. As I raised my binoculars for a better look, he offered a gentle warning. “You have to understand,” he said, “this may not be as pretty as National Geographic.”

Getting There: International flights land at Hosea Kutako International Airport outside Namibia’s capital, Windhoek. DIY travelers should rent a car there for the five-hour drive north to Etosha National Park’s Anderson Gate. Admission for foreigners is $80 NAD (about $8) a day for adults.

Staying There: Comfortable accommodation is available inside the park at a network of state-run camps (from around $100 per person per night for two-person bush chalets, etoshanationalpark.co.za ). There are higher-end lodging options just outside the park gates, including Ongava Lodge, which has 13 chalets and its own reserve where rhinos and lions roam (from around $750 per person per night,wilderness-safaris.com ).

Eating There: Inside Etosha, camp restaurants serve palatable, if uninspired, German cuisine, including schnitzels and spaetzle, as well as game steaks like oryx, kudu and springbok. Packed lunches can be ordered for the road.

When to Go: Most travelers visit during Namibia’s dry season, May through October, when wildlife congregates around water holes. But visits during the November-to-April rainy season are rewarded with lush scenery and an abundance of birds, including thousands of migrating flamingos.

What to Pack: Be prepared for hot, dusty conditions during the day and occasionally chilly nights. The standard safari ensemble—breathable pants with zip-off legs; a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt; and broad-rimmed hat to shield against the sun—works well. Consider investing in a decent set of binoculars.

For the newspaper version of the article, click here: DIY Safari.  

Namibia is one of the few places in the world where the populations of threatened species – from cheetahs and lions to black rhinos and elephants – are actually increasing.  A good part of that success has to do with the country’s unique communal conservancy program.  Local tribal people are given the authority to manage their wildlife resources as they see fit and keep the profits.  Experience has shown them that big mammals are worth a lot more alive – as a draw for tourists – than dead. I had an opportunity to visit several successful conservancies earlier this year, as part of a story for The New York Times. 

 In Namibia, Conservation and Tourism Intersect

By Remy Scalza for The New York Times
Published Nov. 3, 2013
(To read the online version of the article on The New York Times website, click here.)

If you’ve heard of Whistler, the mountain town in British Columbia, it’s probably for the skiing. But Whistler has aspirations of being more than just a magnet for downhill enthusiasts.  Taking a page out of Aspen’s book, it fancies itself an emerging center of food, wine and culture.  So, once a year, the town throws a big, 10-day party of nearly non-stop, over-the-top eating and drinking.  I checked out the festivities recently for Canadian Geographic Travel magazine and also handled the photography for the article. 

Eat. Play. Repeat.

Story and photography by Remy Scalza for Canadian Geographic Travel
(For the magazine version with photos, click here: Eat Play Repeat)

Inside the kitchen of Araxi Restaurant + Bar in Whistler’s Village Square, it’s the calm before the storm. On a crisp Wednesday afternoon in November, executive chef James Walt has come in early to prepare for a meal two nights away. “Expectations are extremely high,” he says, looking up from straining jus for a Wagyu beef cheek. “The type of people who come to Big Guns know their stuff.”

One of Canada’s premier chefs — not to mention good buddies with Gordon Ramsay — Walt is not easily intimidated. But then he’s not preparing for any ordinary dinner. A seven-course, $250-a-plate affair, Big Guns is the culinary climax of Cornucopia, the gastronomic highlight of the year in a town that loves to eat nearly as much as it loves to ski.

For a week or so each fall, gourmands assemble in the Whistler mountains for a celebration of food and wine that would leave Bacchus blushing. Five-, seven- and 10-course dinners are de rigueur. Gala tastings showcase hundreds of wines. Brunches are champagne-paired and afternoon tea comes with martinis. After dark, even party-hardy Whistler is stretched to new extremes with swanky fetes that carry on deep into the autumn night.

In Walt’s kitchen, stockpots are bubbling. Cooks crowd in, clamouring for his attention. It’s my cue to go, but before I do, the chef lets me in on his secret weapon for the big dinner. “White Alba truffles,” he says, raising an eyebrow conspiratorially. “The real deal.” Truffles, of course, are a foodie’s best friend. White Alba truffles — so rare they wholesale for upward of $7,000 a kilo — are the crème de la crème. “It’s gonna blow them away,” he says. [Read more…]