Journey from 25 August to 7 September 2016
Kamchatka is the land of bears and volcanoes.
This peninsula, crossed by two volcanic ranges with some thirty active cones, is young land risen from the Pacific Ocean. Its deep valleys, thick with vegetation and cut by rushing torrents, hold the largest concentration of brown bears on Earth.
It is on the shores of Lake Kurile, at the southern tip of the peninsula, that they gather to feed on the abundant salmon runs. It is not unusual to see several dozen brown bears in a single day, sometimes just a few metres away. Absorbed in fishing, the bears pay their observers no attention at all.
Unforgettable encounters, with the sense of slipping quietly into their world, sharing in this frenzy of plenty. Males, females, and cubs of every age jostle shoulder to shoulder, building the fat reserves they need to survive the winter.
While Lake Kurile offers proximity and abundance, the Uzon caldera offers the setting. Here the bears are scattered across a volcanic landscape covered in emerging tundra. These carnivores turn berry-eaters, picking at blueberries with delicate care.
Around them, volcanoes dominate the landscape, imposing and still. On the way to the caldera, a stop at the Valley of Geysers is essential — one of the hottest spots on the planet, a steep-walled valley where boiling water bursts forth from deep within the Earth.
To visit Kamchatka is to travel back through geological time, to the source of our planet’s earliest upheavals, and to the roots of our relationship with bears.
If you think the footage in the film “Terre des ours” (“Land of the Bears”) is exceptional, you can draw on it for inspiration — the filming took place on exactly the sites you will visit.
For further information, please contact Bénédicte by phone at +33 1 77 37 03 10 or by email.
