Cantabrian Brown Bears (can you find them?). Someido Narural Park, Asturias, Spain.
After our time in Italy and Greece (Part I), the kids went home and Stephanie and I flew to Lisbon, the capital and largest city in Portugal. This westernmost city in continental Europe, “Olissipo” in Greek (since we were just there and still trying to speak that language) was in myth founded and named by Ulysses during his travels.
Obidas Castle. Northern Portugal.
Our first time to Portugal, some ten years ago, we went to Seville and then Cordoba through the Algarve and its beautiful beaches, caves and sea stacks along the Atlantic coastline, and to one of my very favorite places, the tiny end-of-road town of Sagres. Then headed north to Lisbon. This trip we started in Lisbon and headed north again, hugging the coast and stopping in Obidas, Nazaré, and then onto Porto. Crossing into northern Spain, we visited Playa de San Cipian on the Costa Verde, as many tiny surf beaches that we could find, and then a few days in San Sebastian before heading north to Sarlat in southern France.
Atlantic Sunset. Nazaré, Portugal.
But, even as we were wine tasting in Porto, on a beach along the Costa De Cantabria, enjoying pintxos in Basque County, or visiting prehistoric cave paintings and medieval cliff dwellings along the Dordogne River, my thoughts remained fixated on the Eurasian Brown Bear whose territory we were passing through (Ursus arctos arctos and grizzly bears, Ursus arctos horribilis, are subspecies of the same species Ursus arctos). Yes, I know, it is an obsession!
La Village De La Madelene! Dordogne Valley, Southern France.
In Sarlat-la-Canéda we met our friend Sylvie and started our search for bears in earnest. With an estimate of only 14,000 brown bears in all of Europe and maybe seventy brown bears living in the French Pyrenees (see Endnotes), they are hard to find. So we went looking back in history, some twenty-four thousand years ago, for the prehistoric cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) that lived in Europe and Asia during the Pleistocene. At that time, the cave bear ranged across Europe, from northern Iran and into parts of Russia. Some of the largest numbers of cave bear remains have been found in northern Spain and southern France, so we visited the Rouffignac cave to see ancient cave bear claw marks up to seven-feet high on the walls, and bauges – rounded, hollow areas on the clay floor where the bears slept during winter hibernation. We stopped at Font-de-Gaume cave as well to see over two-hundred painted or engraved figurations of bison, horses, mammoths, and reindeer. It is pretty humbling to stand in a room that is some one-hundred-and-sixty decades in age, and to realize there were wooly mammoths, wooly rhinoceroses and cave bears right where you are at. Sylvie headed back to Paris, but claw marks, bear beds and one cave bear painting at Rouffignac were enough to make Stephanie and me excited to go find living bears in today’s Europe.
Costa Verde! Northern Spain.
On our return trip (we flew out of Madrid, never wanting to drive the same roads twice!), we headed for the mountains looking for the Cantabrian Brown Bear, also known as the Iberian brown bear or Iberian bear. We rented a small villa in the town of El Pradiquin in the principality of Asturias in northern Spain. If you haven’t visited this area, you must go to see the lush meadows, forests, mountains, and to look for bears, wolves, wildcats, otters, and foxes. Our villa, up a tiny winding road that required several switchbacks and multiple backups to make a turn, looked out over the valley to the mountains beyond and amazing sunsets.
San Cipian, Spain.
Around eighty-per-cent of Asturias is covered by the Cantabrian Mountains, and it is just beautiful. While age, history, culture, food and drink are the usual attractions for a European vacation, Asturias, referred to as the birthplace of the Spanish nation for its role in history, is a wonderful break spent in some of nature’s most beautiful mountains, meadows and rivers.
Bear Obsession! Roadside Mural, Asturias, Spain.
While the Cantabrian Brown Bear was nearly extinct just ten years ago, it is making a comeback (estimated today at roughly two-hundred-and-fifty bears) and, with bears increasingly common in Asturias, bear watching is becoming a viable tourism attraction. It has certainly established a regional identity for the area, and long before we saw our first bear, we saw multiple bear signs and murals. Known as the Oso pardo cantábrico and, more locally, in Asturias as Osu, this bear is about the same size as a grizzly here in the United States (males as much as 440 lbs.) and live around 25–30 years in the wild.
Brown Bear (male) Territorial Markings. Someido Natural Park, Spain.
To try and find bears, Stephanie and I headed to Parque Natural de Somiedo that extends over the five valleys and rivers of Saliencia, Valle del Lago, Puerto y Pola de Somiedo, Perlunes and Pigüeña. Somiedo is the oldest of the Asturian natural parks, is protected as a Special Area of Conservation (primarily because of the bears) and it one of the Biosphere Reserves in the Cantabrian Mountains (with fifty-three officially designated spaces, Spain has more biosphere reserves than anywhere else in the world). Seeing bears has become an obsession for me, and we looked really hard as we spent a long day with our guide and a small group on the way up to Somiedo pass. From long before first light until a few hours before sunset (we wanted to see the mountains on our drive home) we watched more than a half-dozen bears on the far side of the canyon. Since we were away for so many weeks, and in so many different countries, I wasn’t able to pack my larger camera lens and so viewing the bears felt a lot like viewing wolves in Yellowstone, a long, long way off and using a spotting scope. Not my usual photography outing.
Chamois. Someido Natural Park, Spain.
But how you photograph and connect to bears is the same. Alaska, Wyoming, the Shenandoah, or Spain, up close with a large lens, or far away with a scope, all bear watching requires patience and being constantly alert to any sign of movement. Long hours documenting their actions and movements to understand their lives and to anticipate their next move. Quiet discussions in the wild. An intimate and special connection with this amazing species and the renewed desire to see grizzly bears reintroduced here in Washington State. And, after hours watching across the valley, constantly checking behind you to see if they are watching you as well!
A warm sunny day watching bears and chamois (known as robezu in the Asturias region) amidst the wild orchids and other wildflowers in the Cantabrian mountains! With David, a local bear guide and expert, and a small group of bear lovers -- It doesn’t get any better than that.
Someido Pass. Asturias, Spain.
Asturias and Someido will always be synonymous with us for meaning “home” for Osu, the Eurasian, Iberian or Cantabrian Brown Bear, and for wonderful mountains and rivers in a truly marvelous region of Europe. Emilio, keep your villa and our reservation open, we will be back!
“Most people have a favorite animal that they identify within some way or in spirit. For me, the bear is both terrifying and worthy of the utmost respect. I also find them adorable. They are known to behave in the wild in ways that are curiously human, or at least, we tend to anthropomorphize them as such.”
Christina Griffith, The Bear Pipe Bowl
On the Road to Asturias, Spain.
Endnotes:
· There are thought to be over 200,000 Brown Bears distributed around the world with more than 100,000 of them thought to be living in Russia. It is estimated that around 33,000 Brown Bears are living in America and about 25,000 in Canada. In the whole of Europe it is thought there are approximately 14,000 Brown Bears, including those in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Norway, Romania, Slovakia, Bosnia, Croatia, Bulgaria and Turkey (to list just some).
· Those who follow this post know of my love of “end-of-road” locations. Sagres’ location is considered to be a historic and geographic “end-of-the-world” destination. The small settlement sits at Europe’s most southwesterly point. In the ancient world, it was the last explored point. For this reason the Romans called Sagres the Promontorium Sacrum, otherwise the end of the world. Sagres largely drew up fame for its rich history tied to Portugal’s Age of Discoveries. It was here that Prince Henry the Navigator built a fortified town and a school of navigation. He invited all of the greats including Magellan, Diaz and Vasco da Gama to Sagres to study how to travel and navigate to new lands.
· After this trip, I have a new favorite town in Portugal, Nazaré. This tiny town is located on the "Nazaré Canyon," a submarine geomorphological phenomenon that allows the formation of perfect giant waves (this year, possibly the biggest wave ever measured at 28.57 meters or 93.73 feet). It is the largest underwater canyon in Europe, about 170 kilometers along the coast, reaching a depth of 5,000 meters. The local beach at Praia do Norte hosts the Nazaré Big Wave Challenge each winter. In late June, those waves were non-existent, but the town itself was serene and beautiful, and our room in the Sítio neighborhood looked out over the water and the local church and town square. It was one of the most beautiful and laid-back days on our trip, and we are already planning to go back during the wave season. In all of my travels, there are only two places that I can envision spending weeks or months kicking back and chilling-out. One is a now closed hotel in Costa Rica, the Don Carlos, and now Nazaré.
· As a photographer, I am often asked “how close were you?” “Were you scared?” “Isn’t that dangerous?” Not close, big lens, tight crop on photo is the usual answer. Cautious not scared, and always in awe. On the question of danger, certainly photographing bears is riskier than getting images of pikas or owls, but you need to be alert and informed anytime you are in the wild. I found this article These are the French animals you should really worry about killing you to be the best answer, a bit tongue-in-cheek but dead on (pun intended!).
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