Of bears, “rhinos”, and lights….. And berry eating wolves???

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                                We were awoken at 4:15 am because the northern lights were up, and the team here had made it clear that if anything exciting happens, they will wake us up!  And so they did.  These were the white type of lights, looking like great drapes across the sky.  The sky itself is amazing with no light pollution at all, you can really see so many stars.  Before going to bed, I had indeed spent some time admiring the Milky Way.

 We went back to bed, but not for long, because at 7:00am, they woke us up again, because a polar bear was nearby, and they wanted to go out right away, before breakfast, to see if we could get near.  But he went out for a swim before we could catch up, so breakfast happened, and then we went back out to try to find him again.  We did catch up we him:  he had come out of the water and was sunning himself on the shore.   We approached him on foot hoping to get within about 100 yards of him.  But we must look like a scary bunch to him because he just moved away again.  (So go some pictures, but not great ones).

So back on our “rhinos” (as our trucks are known) we went and were going to follow him again but - just as I was thinking that these machines could go through anything- one of them just refused to start!   Since we are a small group, we managed to get back to the lodge on the remaining one, and the team went back during lunch to fix it.

Along the way, we saw many foot prints in the mud.  Below is a wolf’s.  These can stay for years in the mud.  I guess it’s how fossils are eventually made….

After another very nice lunch, and after our guides managed to fix our rhino, we went back and tracked the 4 wolf pups again.  

We found them gorging themselves with berries in a gooseberry patch!  (Who knew!  Certainly not me…..).  They entertained us with their antics and we followed them for a long time.   They call each other, and play with each other and are very inquisitive:  They kept coming near us to check us out - I guess they decided we were neither food, nor dangerous, and just kept on going.    Again - there were a lot of birds!  Tons of eagles, harrier hawks and more - here is a short eared owl.

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We admired some more subarctic beauty on our way back to the lodge.

 After another light dinner, we were treated to another northern light show!  This one at 9:00pm! No need to get out in the middle of the night.  It was brighter too!  Plus, we could watch it by the bonfire - what a lovely way to end the day