Hot dog! Jamaica's new, cool runnings.

• Author: Stalker, Ian
• Position: Chukka Caribbean Adventures

COULD TROPICAL Ocho Rios, Jamaica, soon be reminding people of the Yukon of Jack London fame? It might be, once local tour operator Chukka Caribbean Adventures' latest project gets off the ground. Later this year, the company plans to begin offering dogsled tours to visitors traditionally drawn to Jamaica's sun-soaked beaches and rum punches--that's right, expeditions that would seemingly be more at home in the Yukon Territory made famous by London's Call of the Wild and other tales of husky dog teams whisking people over snow-covered trails during sub-Arctic winters.

Daniel Melville, Chukka Caribbean Adventures' Ocho Rios-based general manager, says the venture was inspired by a summer visit his father made to Canada, where he saw a musher running a dog team on a wheeled sled over snow-less terrain, with the wheels enabling him to train year-round. When he returned home to Jamaica, Meville's father suggested that dogsled excursions might appeal to tourists vacationing in Ocho Rios.

"We thought he was nuts when he told us," Melville admits.

Chukka Caribbean Adventures' tours will carry clients on rubber-wheeled golf carts over paths and meadows, avoiding the country's beaches since the sleds don't perform well on sand.

Paul Norman, the company's Ocho Rios sales manager, reports that the tour outfit now has "twenty Jamaican mongrels"...