After a scrumptious breakfast we were ready to head out for a walk, this time I would be joining the group and I’m so very glad I did. The lighting was perfect and the bears were aplenty! We had only to step outside the compound to have our first bear sighting of the day.
At one point we had three bears around us and two more off in the distance. We didn’t know which way to point the cameras! Bears saying hello to one another, bears rolling around in the snow, bears playing peekaboo… it was wonderful!
We walked down to the Hudson Bay coast where we found even more bears! We walked out onto the ice where we had a close encounter with one of them, it walked over to where we were, it listened to the instructions given by the guide and stayed a safe distance from us and lay down.
We spent about 2 hours out walking with the bears before we headed back to the lodge, stopping briefly for some ptarmigan and then we were eating another yummy lunch.
2:30pm and it was time again to go out for another tundra walk and more bears. I can’t say I enjoyed the walking on the ice part of the adventure, I have tiny feet with little area to grip and the pace set by the other members of the group made it difficult to keep up! There was no rush, we had plenty of time to see the bears and they weren’t going anywhere, so I took my time and managed not to fall over (although several did slip over at one time or another!) but I do wish we had taken our yak tracks!
Back at the lodge the two males were hanging around the fence line next to our ‘cabin’. We enjoyed watching them interact with one another before it was our turn to host the other half of the group for hors d’oeuvres. Dinner was followed by a presentation on polar bears by Terry and we had an unbroken good night’s sleep.