We are continuing north towards Estonia and driving across towards the Russian border. At one point, a small spit of Russia extends into Estonia. You are allowed to drive through it in your car. It is about 1 km on Russian territory, with barbed wire on both sides of the road. It could have been a bit exciting, but we decide to take another route.
With a drone, telephoto lens, thermal binoculars, four-wheel drive, and camera, the Russians might get the wrong impression if they were to stop us. Some experiences, you also have to remember to say “no” to.
We remain on Estonian territory the whole way, with a break at the Piusa Cave Museum. These are sandstone caves excavated in connection with the search for quartz glass. There are approximately 20 km of tunnels, but only a tiny fraction is accessible to visitors due to the risk of collapse.
However, there are permanent residents. Around 3500 bats overwinter in the caves and fly in and out of the ventilation sites where the caves have already collapsed.
We continue north, to the absolute highlight of the tour. We're going to go out and look for bears...
We're using 3 days. It has cost a lot of blood – luckily not tears. There are so many mosquitoes and horseflies that we're covered in red spots. It ITCHES!
But when you're sitting in the photo booth in silence, it's almost meditative.
Wait, doubt, hope, think about all sorts of things other than bears… and then all of a sudden it happens.
Images are produced under all sorts of conditions. Young bears, old bears, bears with cubs, bears that might want to make cubs. Sunshine, rain and Nordic summer twilight.
That makes 1600 pictures, while the mosquitoes swarm and offer blood samples. Now we've tried to boil it down to just under 40.
But it's hard to choose.
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