2018/10 Churchill trip - Back to Hope |
|||||||
Return to Hope |
|||||||
We transferred to our bus which took us directly to the airport where we said goodbye to driver Neil and waited for our charter flight back to Winnipeg. There was only our group flying this time so we didn’t warrant the 737 jet. Instead, as we filed out onto the tarmac I thought it looked like we were in a scene from the film Casablanca with the chunky, bulbous plane and its propellers. In fairness the plane wasn’t as old as the Electra in the movie, but it was only a generation away, a Convair built around 1954.
The feeling persisted as we climbed inside a round tube and sat in our imitation leather seats.
Looking down the dimly lit fuselage I expected to see Ingrid Bergman, and maybe even Bogart. The toilet was a camping-style long drop, probably a very long drop. Only dwarves with severe spinal deformities could stand and use the toilet. The engines were too noisy for us to hear each other, but the 
food was good (cold of course) and the plane got us there safely.
(I had a little room left on this last page so I have included pictures of a few spare bears from Monday.)
We were back in the Four Points hotel and actually in the same room. Our tour officially ended next morning and we took our two flights back to Abbotsford where it was still a warm fall afternoon.
Apart from our missing the Itsanitaq Museum the tour had delivered well. We had seen over two dozen bears in various activities and seen even more in the far distance; what Neil referred to as “pixel bears”. Our count was about twice that of the previous tour so perhaps we’d hit the sweet spot. The tours after ours could expect to see as many or more until the bears took to the ice.
Did we see the Northern Lights? No, this would have involved walking to a part of town that had no streetlights and sitting and waiting. It would be a toss-up as to which showed up first, the lights or a bear. As it happened we had cloudy skies anyway. Prime viewing time for the lights is January/February, when the skies are usually clear. I believe there is a lodge with a safe viewing area.
So would we go there again? Not in the winter, but in the summer the Churchill River is full of beluga whales and the tundra is a mass of flowers, so it’s possible we may go back then. Sandie is keen to travel on the railway so we may be able to drive to Thompson or the end of the road at Gillam and catch the train there. There’s no published timetable yet but the line has just reopened. The first train arrived in Churchill on Halloween.