Archive for Churchill

Day 3 in Churchill

October 18, 2008 at 6:57 pm · Filed under Churchill

This short post is about our third day in Churchill, Manitoba, and our second day riding around in a Tundra Buggy.

The second day was terrific, but two days is probably enough. Once again we were out for nearly 9 hours, from a little after 8am until a little before 5pm. Right after we “launched” we spent a long time looking at a mother bear and two yearling cubs. The cubs wrestled and played and chased each other around, which was great. Throughout the course of the day we saw about 15 bears. India must have taken more than 100 pictures of polar bears, so we should have plenty.

Once again, the best part of the experience was standing outside on the viewing deck (even though today was overcast and misty), smelling the wind off the bay and looking at polar bears. In the late afternoon we saw a big black-and-white Snowy Owl standing on the ground near the Tundra Buggy camp. After a few minutes the owl flew gracefully right past us. Beautiful animal, very special thing to see.

More important than the game viewing or the rest of the Churchill experience, two people here have made me reconsider my son.

Maybe because Zola and I have been spending too much time together, or maybe because of my own failings as a home-school teacher, or maybe I am just a grouch, but I have been very impatient with (and harsh on) my son lately. To be honest, it has been a frequent source of stress for the whole family, as I overreact to his behavior, and everyone gets upset.

Marc the Tundra Buggy driver pulled me aside this afternoon to tell me that Zola is special and smart and very sweet, and that he really enjoyed having Zola on the vehicle for the last two days. Hmmmmm. Makes me think.

For dinner this evening, we went back to Gypsy’s restaurant in Churchill for the second night in a row. As we were leaving. our waiter from last night also made a special point of telling me how much he enjoyed spending time with Zola, and what a good kid he seemed to be. Hmmmm again. Makes me think more.

I said to the waiter, “Well, that’s nice of you to say, but he does a lot of things that…” The waiter interrupted me to say “It’s easy to find faults in your own kids. Please, I ask you, take a step back and realize what a wonderful little boy this one is.”

Something for me to think about, for sure.

This evening the weather turned nasty here in Churchill. The wind is up to 20-30 miles per hour, and it alternates between snow and freezing rain. I can’t even imagine what real winter is like here, after the tourists and he bears have all left. All of the pine trees have needles and branches only on their southwestern sides, showing how strong the winds get. We have been told that there is a serious problem with alcohol and drug use, which is sad but not surprising. Tough place.

Everyone is starting to hunker down, except for the polar bears, who are just waiting patiently for the ice to form, so they can get on with their hunting.

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Tracking polar bears in Churchill

October 17, 2008 at 7:27 pm · Filed under Churchill

This post is about our first day in the Tundra Buggy, tracking polar bears in Northern Manitoba.

Polar bears are the main attraction here in Churchill. The “bear season” lasts about six weeks, from early October until mid-November, ending once the Hudson Bay has frozen over, and the bears can go off and hunt seals on the ice all winter.

This morning our little group of 16 people gathered at about 7:45am (long before sunrise), and was shuttled out to the Tundra Buggy launching station, 15 minutes outside of town. We were dressed in our snowsuits and hats, and ready for the first of our two days tracking polar bears.

Our shuttle bus driver was a young Dutch man, who is travelling around Canada for a year. When I asked, “Why are you travelling around Canada for a year?” he gave a very pragmatic, Dutch answer: “Canada is a big country, and I figured it would take a year to travel around it.”

Tundra Buggies are purpose-built vehicles for exploring the marshy tundra terrain around Churchill, looking for polar bears. Because water doesn’t drain well through the permafrost, the flat landscape is dotted with large, shallow (2-3 feet deep) lakes. Each buggy is a cross between a diesel-powered monster truck (five-foot high tires and a heavy duty chassis) an old municipal bus (a 30-foot long, big-windowed white box, all riveted together), and an amphibious landing vehicle. Each Tundra Buggy also has an open-air viewing deck on the back. It is ideally suited for driving on the rough roads and through the shallow icy lakes around Churchill. The theoretical maximum speed of a Tundra Buggy is 25 miles per hour, but we spent most of our time crawling along (bumpily) at about 10 mph.

Our Tundra Buggy driver and guide, Marc, is a Churchill classic. He is a French Canadian, and works as a river guide in the Yukon during the summer, and as a dog-sled guide in the Canadian Rockies during the winter. The six-week bear season in Churchill fits in perfectly, so he has been driving a Tundra Buggy for the last ten years. Mark is very handsome, friendly and competent, and was particularly sweet to Zola and Charlsi. India conveyed her general approval by telling me “Marc must get a lot of babes during bear season.”

We drove around in the Tundra Buggy from about 8:30am to 5pm, which is a lot of time in a Tundra Buggy. Fortunately, within the first hour we saw a mother bear and her two-year old cub. Obligingly they came right up to the vehicle, sniffed the tires, and were very photogenic and accommodating.

After looking at the first pair for nearly an hour, we drove around and looked at other bears, sleeping, trotting along, drinking water. Marc told us that this is a “waiting time,” and that the bears don’t want to expend a lot of energy until they can start hunting. That didn’t matter, they were awesome to look at (very picturesque against the brown vegetation and black water of the glacial lakes and the Hudson Bay).

When we switched off the diesel engines, and I could stand on the back deck in the cool wind, smelling the water and watching the bears do their thing, it was just great.

All in we saw eleven bears today, although it seems a little too special to keep track just by quantifying the sightings. We also saw (and tracked) an Arctic fox, and many, many ptarmigans. Ptarmigans, I found out, are medium-sized white ground birds, which are at the bottom of the food chain for every predator in the Arctic. As we rolled slowly across the tundra, Marc explained a lot about the ecosystem and its animals, and he regaled us with tales of the north country.

It was a wonderful day.

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