★★★ Wildlife
Meet Polar Bears in Churchill
Worth a trip
Every October, polar bears gather around Churchill, Manitoba, waiting for the Hudson Bay ice that will carry them back to the seals. We went to look for them.
Our tundra vehicle rolled out over ground that was not the bare waste I had imagined. Low plants burned red, orange, and yellow across the tundra.
The first evening, at dusk, the driver stopped on a small rise for dinner. And then a polar bear walked out from below the little hill and came toward us, close enough to see with the naked eye. It felt unreal, this huge, beautiful animal simply walking free. Dinner was served in the vehicle as the light failed, and I ate it watching a polar bear at dusk.
The next day it rained, and I expected little. A red fox crossed the tundra and turned to look at us, the first wild fox I had ever seen. Then our guide spotted a bear far across the water, with other vehicles already crowding toward it. Our driver decided there were too many, and we drove on. I wondered whether we should have stayed.
Minutes later we stopped behind another vehicle, and there they were. Two huge male bears, rearing up and pushing and swatting at each other, then flopping down together to rest, then going again, round after round, their breath visible in the cold. They were about ten meters away. Then one of them walked toward our vehicle, so close that I could see the scars on his face and ears. It circled the vehicles, as if it had decided it had intimidated us sufficiently, and went back to its sparring partner.
The next day was sunny, and we could see furthest, but the bears were mostly far away or asleep. We had coffee and cookies beside one sleeping bear.
Our driver showed us a video from her own front door, taken the night before. A polar bear had run into town, with a car behind it trying to chase it out. We spent our days driving deep into the tundra to find bears, and at night they came to the houses.
It is magical to see polar bears in their natural habitat, roaming freely and not afraid. I hope the bay is kept that way, and the animals stay undisturbed forever.
Would you want to experience any of these someday?