Worldrover TRAVEL MAGAZINE. February 2001

Travel
with
Allan Rogers

I joined a giggling, gaggle of senioritis from Mexico for an exciting slide in a big, bright yellow, rubber boat.

FUN WITHOUT ABILITY

or how
I fell for wiles of
Maggie on the mountaintop

In Quebec you don’t have to be able to ski to enjoy the winter. Alternative activities are easily arranged.
For some of the more unusual, use the shuttle service that picks up at the city hotels (cost $CD 18,) and transports you to Valcartier for a spot of snow rafting. "Fun without ability" was what I was told' and "ideal for the non skier”.


‘Village Vacances Valcartier’, is a water park in summer with the usual assortment of slides and chutes. In winter these freeze and if you have the ‘bottle’ to do it, you can plunge down an icy 600 metre 'half pipe' in a rubber dinghy and be clocking 80 kph at the bottom. (With luck your breakfast arrives at the same time!)

You can also drop your rear end into a rubber inner tyre and be dragged up a small mountain. At the top there is a superb view of the snow-covered river. It might tempt you to return when the snow melts in spring.
At that time, you can enjoy dramatic ‘white water’ rafting, but it was snow rafting that I was there to enjoy and I joined a giggling, gaggle of senioritis from Mexico for an exciting slide in a big, bright yellow, rubber boat.

It was a fun day with all sorts of experiences on
offer, from sleigh rides (£2.50)
to a Go Kart racetrack. Now go-karting we have tried, and found exciting enough on dry land, but ‘go Karting’ on ICE!

Going to the dogs!

A visit to the Kellogg Québec Winter Carnival, provides also an excellent opportunity to spend time at the ski resorts, and so it was, after the high jinks in the old city that I fell for wiles of Maggie on the mountaintop. She was the most photographed female at the Mont Sainte-Anne’s Ski Resort I wasn’t the first guy that she had conned a free meal out off and somehow I knew

I would not be the last. I didn’t so much ‘set my cap at her’ as have it snatched. You see Maggie was an enchanting St Bernard's dog who has perfected the trick of looking beguiling and then grabbing the hat or glove of anyone who stoops to pat her. She will only release the object in exchange for a ‘dog cookie.’ She is extremely successful at this and is consequently a very large dog. Her master is one of the instructors and Maggie sits in a bright green kennel, with a barrel of brandy at her neck proudly wearing a dog coat bearing the cross of the emergency services.

These services are good and one of the benefits of skiing on Mont Sainte-Anne is that volunteer doctors and nurses staff a centre on the slopes and are always on call. Treatment that you might pay £5,000 for in a hospital is carried out free on the mountain.

A dash of Whisky

‘Maggie’ the St Bernard’s, might be ‘Queen of the hill’ but further down it was ‘Whisky’ who is ‘top dog.’ Whisky is the principal, dominant dog of the sixty animal pack that is used for the dog sled teams.

Whisky was the lead dog of our team of six. We generated our own wind chill factor as we hurtled along so I was glad that I had taken advantage of the protective clothing that was provided as part of the package. We stopped at one point to checked out an igloo and a winter hut that you can use on an over-night expedition. A Texan lady from anther sledge, was even brave enough to use the outside loo. The sprit of the Alamo lives on! We felt ourselves to be no mean set of adventurers as we sped over creeks with little wooden bridges, passed though the tall pine trees and went up slopes and over the plains. “Is this a hunting area?” I asked Jimmy the guide.
“No,” he replied “In summer it’s the local golf course.”

No can ski but
can ski-doo

Other winter fun things included snow-mobiling. You can rent the machines by the day or by the hour and explore some of the 2000 kilometres of special trails. They are a quite exciting ride.
I got astride a gleaming metallic blue one and tootled along at 25mph. Being close to the snow, the illusion of speed was really heightened. Along the way there were signs warning of Caribou but none came out to look at the blue streak. Eventually having acted out the James Bond fantasy I handed the ski-do back and rather envied the group who were setting off. They were on a on a five day tour in which they would ride through the woods and stay at guest houses.