And then it is off on our big adventure to see the bears of Estonia, one of the major reasons we were in this area. We booked the tour way ahead from the US but we didn’t notice they provided us all the info on how to access the site until the night before…oops. We find it ok and even make it down the dirt road to the parking lot and breathe a big sigh of relief when we see there is only one more car in the parking lot, it was quite important to not have more than one additional group as we will explain later.
Then the guide comes and we start running (there is almost no exageration in this verb) towards the hides. As we stop to take pictures we fall behind quite often but the guide really doesn’t care as he continues speeding onwards.
Luckily it is very difficult to get lost as we just have to follow the side road to the end and a few bouts of fast running allows us to catch up with the guide at least enough so we can see him from a distance to understand where we have to go. And then we arrive at the hide, it is quite impressive for the outside and given that there are two of them each group gets one, which is why it was important that there was only one additional group.
From the inside the hide is also impressive especially as it is all ours. There are multiple chairs at the window that we use covered by sleeping bags, no heat in the hide, there are about twelve beds so we have our choice of them and a very primitive toilet with no water.
There are two lines of sight from our hide one towards the entrance and one toward the back. There is also a microphone that captures sound from the outside which is quite fun to listen to with many birds flying all around during dusk.
Initially there are only birds including a very active crested tit but as the evening advances we start to see our first mammals, first a domestic cat, really, and then a raccoon dog. We are quite excited to see it as we never seen one before and he takes his sweet time to investigate the bait/food left around the hide before continuing on.
And then the big guns come out swinging first the wild boars, two of them. They investigate a bit and leave but then return about an hour later. Now they investigate even more and then suddenly one of them starts snorting quite weirdly and runs back and worth between the back and front of the hide. After a bit of this behavior we decide to investigate the front of the hide and there it is, our bear. It is quite big and serious and doesn’t seem to care about the boar while he explores his food choices in the meadow. He sits and wanders for some time and we try to take photos even though it almost dark already and then after he leaves happily go to sleep. We have finally seen a bear up close!
After a cold night where we hide deeply into our sleeping bags and banish every thought of ever exiting them we wake up quite early as we have to leave the hide at 8AM. But first we peek a few times outside, are any bears or wild boars still in the area?
There are none, in fact the area is eerily quiet with none of the jays or other birds visible and also no mammals anywhere.
Soon we leave as we have to leave before 8AM and take one more look at the hides where we had so much fun the evening before watching the bears.
Returning we don’t have a guide so we can take it slow and enjoy the walk. Surprisingly we don’t see any birds and only one mammal that runs across the road before we have time to identify it.
Our car is still safely at the trailhead and now it is time to return to Rakvere to pick up our relative so we can continue on towards Latvia.
