Bears, bogs and birds
Latvia is the wildest of the three Baltic countries: 53% forest, with bears in the eastern hills, wolves in the western wildlands, and one of the great funnels of the European autumn at Cape Kolka.
The route.
Day by day.
Daylight is shown for a departure on 26 October, calculated for each day's own location. Ask us and we will run the figures for your dates.
Settling in on the bog boardwalk
Pick-up at RIX. 50 km west to the Ķemeri raised bog. The 3 km boardwalk loop in the late afternoon, a 6,000-year-old peat landscape of bog pine, pool complexes and, with luck, elk tracks. Welcome dinner at the park canteen.
Read the full day
Ķemeri is the gentlest possible introduction to the Latvian outdoors and the best briefing room we know. Edgars uses the loop to teach you how to read the ground: which pools are ancient and which are three years old, why the pines stay knee-high, where the elk cross. By the time you finish the circuit you are looking at the landscape instead of through it.
- Ķemeri bog boardwalk
- Dinner at the park canteen
- First briefing with Edgars
Ķemeri National Park lodge
A wooden lodge inside the national park, run by a couple who used to work as rangers.
Held, not booked, until your deposit clears. If it is gone by then we substitute an equal or better hotel and tell you first.
The forester's house
150 km north up the coast to a working forester's house in Slītere. Orientation walk in the afternoon, an old logging track through pine forest and a nineteenth-century coastal pasture. Beaver dam paddle on the Imula river before dinner.
Read the full day
The forester's house has no mobile signal, which is the point. It is a 1920s pine building on a forest track ten minutes from the open sea, with a wood stove, a sauna and four rooms. The afternoon paddle is unhurried: two-person canoes, a slow tributary, and a run of dams that have been maintained and rebuilt by the same beaver families for decades. Sit still and they surface. Otters often beat them to it.
- The drive north
- Settling into the forester's house
- Beaver dam paddle on the Imula
Dawn in the hide and the Livonian coast
A pre-sunrise walk (4am) to a wildlife hide. Wild boar most days, the occasional fox at dawn, the once-a-week wolf. Late breakfast back at the house. Afternoon on the Livonian coast at Mazirbe, with a Livonian coffee at the community house.
Read the full day
The walk in takes twenty-five minutes in the dark and you do it in silence, single file, with red torchlight. The hide seats four with a long horizontal slot facing a clearing that the forestry service keeps open. Boar come most mornings. Foxes are frequent. Wolves are the prize and the honest odds are one or two sightings in ten dawns. Afterwards you sleep, then spend the afternoon among the Livonians, a Finnic people whose last native speaker died in 2013 and whose coast is now a string of very quiet villages.
- 4am hide session
- Late breakfast in the forest
- Afternoon on the Livonian coast
Slītere forester's house
Second night.
Held, not booked, until your deposit clears. If it is gone by then we substitute an equal or better hotel and tell you first.
South to the migration funnel
Drive south down the coast to Pape (220 km). The lake here is one of Europe's great migration funnels. Settle into a converted 1920s ringing station cabin. Late afternoon walk to the seaward bird tower for the evening flights.
Read the full day
Pape sits on a narrow isthmus between a shallow lake and the sea, which is exactly why the birds use it: they follow the coast south and the isthmus concentrates them. The ringing station has been operating here since 1966 and if the nets are up you can watch the ringers work. The cabin is simple, shared kitchen, wood stove, and the lake immediately outside the window.
- The drive south
- The ringing station cabin
- Evening bird tower at Pape
Pape ringing station cabin
A 1920s wooden cabin on the isthmus between the lake and the sea. Shared kitchen, simple but warm.
Held, not booked, until your deposit clears. If it is gone by then we substitute an equal or better hotel and tell you first.
Migration watch and the return
Pre-sunrise migration watch from the seaward tower. September brings hundreds of thousands of birds an hour over Pape, with cranes, geese and eagles among them. Late breakfast, the drive back to Riga (220 km), and evening departures.
- Pre-sunrise migration watch
- Late breakfast at the cabin
- The drive back to Riga
Request your quote.
Tell us your dates and party size. We'll reply within one working day, with a private, fully-costed version of Bears, bogs and birds to follow within two.
within two working days
Prices shown in USD for reference. You're billed in EUR.
- Private trip: just your party, your pace
- Flexible dates, year-round departures
- No payment taken to enquire
- A $503 pp deposit holds your dates
- Protected under the EU Package Travel Directive
Priced by party size.
- Per person
- $2,843(≈ €2,430)
- Total for 2
- $5,686(≈ €4,860)
- Deposit to book
- $1,006(≈ €860)
- Balance, 45 days out
- $4,680(≈ €4,000)
Calculated from the same per-person rates as the table below. Final pricing is confirmed with your quote and moves with your dates, room choices and any day you change. Billed in EUR.
Per-person rates by party size
Prices shown in USD for reference. You're billed in EUR.
What's included.
- 4 nights (Slītere forester's house 2, Pape ringing station cabin 2)
- A Latvian wildlife biologist for the whole week (Edgars)
- Two morning sessions in the wildlife hide
- Ķemeri raised bog boardwalk at sunrise
- Beaver dam paddle on the Imula river
- Bird migration watch at Cape Kolka (September only, included; a coastal walk substitutes in other months)
- Field-kitchen breakfasts; two dinners in the field
- All transfers from Riga; binoculars and field guides on loan
- International travel to Riga (RIX)
- Most lunches and one dinner
- Travel insurance (mandatory; must cover remote locations)
- Tips for your guide (suggested €10 per day per traveller)
- Optional bear hide overnight in eastern Latvia (€280 supplement, on request)
