For my second to last weekend in fair-ole-Canada-land I was treated well beyond my wildest dreams. Joined by an all Aussie crew consisting of Andrew “Sweet Cheeks” Dansie, Dave “El Presidente” Smithson and Aimee “Technically American” Wagner we embarked on adventure into the now frequented cottage country district of Muskoka ending up in the appropriately named destination of “Port Sydney“.

Clambering into Sweet Cheek’s new Jeep (after losing it in the Airport carpark for 20 minutes) we were off, cruising down Highway 27 taking in the beauty of pitch black darkness as you become accustom to blanketing the sky after 4pm. To relieve the boredom of it all the heavens opened with a flurry of snow dancing in the glow of freshly installed headlight globes.

Once arriving at the now snow clad cottage, three hours after our originally predicted ETA, there wasn’t a great deal of activity beyond alcohol and sleep to make clear mention of. We had a constant light dusting of snow falling throughout our stay that was just beautiful, a lot of my time I spent staring out the window and watching the flakes fall against the glass amazed at their intricacy in random design. There was one brief parade of enthusiasm, it involved a snowball fight on the side of Highway 11 in front of the gates to the closed national park we were kicked out of (if it’s closed for winter lock the fucking gates you idiots), but after 15 minutes of running around in 0 degree weather your lungs start to burn just a tad, well ours did anyway, and besides there was more alcohol to consume back at the cottage.

Unfortunately for me alcohol still isn’t going down the best since my little hospital stay. I did luckily managed to consume one of El Presidente’s fine Mojito’s made with the skill and precision only that of a true “muddler” master could achieve. It’s a shame they tasted like crap without the sugar added but that wasn’t his fault ;) My lack of alcohol consumption did however mean that I was the only half sober one in the place, thus automatically delegating me as the cottage’s personal chef for the weekend. Over the two and a half days we were there I managed to cook 3 T-bone steaks, 20 marinated chicken drumsticks, chocolate chip cookies, and 6 egg, bacon & tomato muffins each to the individuals personal preference. Hmmm, maybe I should start The Cooking Show back up again!

Put it down to good friends, hospital stays or the miraculous beauty of a snow kissed scenery but with only one weekend left in North America it’s going to be very hard to top this one! Thanks guys!

You can see all the photos here.