The base camp is just past the entrance to Wapusk National Park and is where the two licensed operators (Tundra Buggy Adventures and Great White Bear) transit tourists onto the tundra buggies / polar rovers. By 8:30 we were on the Tundra buggy and getting briefed by our guide / driver, a Churchill native named Brendan. And then we were off. The polar rover (since we had such a great time going with Great White Bear Adventures, I think we should call them that, even though tundra buggy is a much more descriptive and alluring name) is a custom-built vehicle designed for traveling off road, over snow, and through water. Ours had three independent axles (thus was a six-wheel drive vehicle) and the wheels are about 5’ in diameter (think big earth moving machinery) and very wide. The rover has its own bathroom, a propane heater and windows like a school bus with seats like a coach. The back has an outdoor viewing platform. Hopefully the attached photos give you a better idea than my descriptions. If you want to see all 43 of the uploaded photos, they’re viewable at http://www.flickr.com/photos/familyadventure/sets/72157622448757711/
Shortly after heading out, we spotted bear #1, a mid-sized male that Brendan speculated had not seen many Polar Rovers as he didn’t want to hang out near us. We watched him walk along the rocks and then try to get out of our way by heading to the shoreline. We followed in hot pursuit (well, as hot a pursuit as you can have when you’re in a vehicle that has a top speed of 10mph on the tundra). We got some more photos of the bear along the shore before he managed to evade us some more. We then headed out to another part of the park.
By now it was about 10am and the gentle bouncing of the rover over the rocky trails had lulled Simon into a nap. After about an hour of fruitless searching, Brendan suddenly stopped the rover. At first, none of us knew what he was looking at, but then he pointed to a large yellowish rock in the distance that, on closer inspection, was the backside of a sleeping bear. We couldn’t get any closer to the bear (we were at least 100 yards away) and he didn’t appear to be doing anything but napping, so we decided to move on.
We could see that there were three other rovers/buggies a few miles away all stopped near one of the Tundra Lodges (the two companies each tow out large, movable hotels for the 6-week polar bear season). Brendan decided to head over, and when we got there we could see a well-fed, adolescent bear napping next to a small pond. Josh named the bear Paul (I’m not sure why) and we stopped, the rover, ate lunch (a hot tomato soup that was just what we needed after standing on the cold observation deck, sandwiches, donuts, coffee & hot chocolate). I should note that while it was pretty warm inside the rover, outside it was about 28 Fahrenheit (just below freezing) outside with a very strong wind. Also, whenever we were near a bear we were opening a lot of windows which quickly lowered the temperature inside. Thus, the hot soup was most welcome. Over the course of the hour and a half we spent having lunch we watched ‘Paul’ curl up and nap, open his eyes and look up at us and the other rovers / buggies, go back to napping, get up and yawn, go back to napping, lift his head up again to look around, go back to napping, etc. I was amazed by how human-like the expressions were on his face, and we were near enough to really see the lazy bear go through his motions.
By now it was around 2pm and we started heading back (the tour was scheduled to end at 4). We went back near the area where we had seen Bear #2 (the sleeping lump off in the distance) and he had moved on. We then went out near the Hudson bay to where our tour company (Great White Bear) had set up their tundra lodge and saw another bear walking in the distance. By now a snowstorm had kicked up and so visibility was low (the snow was coming down hard, diagonally). The pictures I took have a very impressionistic look to them, and are some of my favorites so far.
After another 20 minutes or so of watching Bear #4 through a snowstorm, we started heading back to base. I was really amazed at the rover’s ability to go through a few feet of water, over rocky hills, etc. At some points it looked like we were out on a boat! Here are some other shots to give people an idea of what the view was like from inside the rover and rugged the vehicles are.
By 4pm we had pulled back up to base camp and were transferred back into the school bus for the ride back to Churchill. We had a wonderful dinner at the Lazy Bear Inn, by far the nicest restaurant we went to in Churchill (much nicer décor than the others, and excellent food). I’m writing this while waiting for our evening train. We head back south to Thompson this evening and then will re-join our RV and head to down to Winnipeg for a few days before heading off to points that we haven’t yet decided.
Cheers,
Evan
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