The Best Place to See Polar Bears (Churchill, Manitoba in Canada 🇨🇦)

This is a 1.6 million dollar polar rover built for seeing polar bears. We are in Churchill. Should I tell them I don't have a driver's license? Welcome to Churchill, Manitoba, the polar bear capital of the world. Churchill is a teeny town in northern Manitoba of about 800 residents. Because of its unique landscape and the current here, it's the first place where the Hudson Bay freezes over every year. So every October and November up to 1,000 polar bears flock here so they can get out on the ice and hunt seals, and hopefully we're gonna see some of them. In this video, we'll take you on two polar bear tours, one on a massive polar rover and another more private local experience, as well as show you around one of the most remote and unique towns we've ever visited. If you missed last week's episode, Jessica and I just spent the last 46 hours on that train. Let's just say we didn't exactly get a whole lot of sleep, so we are headed to our Airbnb to catch some Z's before we go try to find polar bears. Well it is bright and early just after 7 30 a.m. We've got our first polar bear expedition. We're going with Great White Bear Tours. They use a polar rover, which is an approved vehicle that they can take out into the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, which you need special permits for and regular passenger vehicles cannot go. So we're hoping that we get to see some really cool bears. It both has these like inside heated area, as well as a patio that you can go out and observe bears from. So we're hoping that we can enjoy views of the bears from the patio as well. Speaking of which, our ride is here. This massive beast behind us is the Great White Bear Polar Rover. And even though it's a beast, it has massive tires, which makes it exert less than four pounds per square inch of pressure on super fragile arctic environments. Additionally, it only burns 15 gallons per entire day. So basically it's designed to be as non-intrusive as possible. It's also supposed to be super comfy. It has an entire washroom on board, so we're pretty excited to spend all day on it. Because it's pretty frosty out here. Let's get tucked. We're in like 4 feet of water right now. Are we really? Yes. These rovers are so cool. There's all these shallow lakes. We're currently in an enormous one. Polar bear tours in Churchill are not cheap. This tour cost us 522 Canadian dollars per person, which sounds like a lot until you ride one of these impressive machines. Each Polar Rover is custom built by the tour operator, and our driver estimated that they cost 1.6 million dollars a piece, with each tire costing 15,000 dollars. These machines are so huge. They're like houses on wheels. Wow. So we just pulled over for our first caribou sighting. Unfortunately, it was pretty far away, so kind of hard to see. Still keeping our fingers crossed for polar bears though. We're just seeing our first polar bear. It's actually pretty close to the bus. It's maybe like 30 or 40 feet away. Oh, there. See his head? This is so cool, Jess. First ever polar bear sighting. That's so cool. I was getting really worried that we wouldn't see one, because we were going for over an hour, and I'm so glad we got to see one. We read about like what you shouldn't do when you see a polar bear, and one of the top things they say you should not do is piss habit. What person sees a polar bear and decides like, you know what I'm gonna do? It's probably pretty hard to see, but right in between us is a polar bear. So today we learned that Canada actually has between half and two thirds of the world's population of polar bears, up to 15,000. It's kind of wild to think that Churchill alone gets 1,000 of those 15,000. It's just wild to me that we are like 50 feet away from a polar bear right now. Just a moment ago, a caribou walked right in front of the polar bear. So cool. We feel pretty lucky to have seen two caribou on our tour, as our guide said that they're not super common around here. We actually got to see all kinds of wildlife on our tour, including ptarmigan, caribou, arctic hare, and even a red fox. There is two more polar bears. There's one in between those two polar rovers, and another right here in front of us. The one that we're looking at right now is a male because he is absolutely massive. Oh, I love it. While we watched this goofy polar bear roll around, Justin somehow bribed our driver to let him sit behind the wheel as we started to make our way back. How did you manage to do this? I don't know. This is crazy. I don't think my insurance covers this. No. You're killing it, dude. Does it feel any different? It's like nothing I've ever done before. That was not like driving an RV. You had to turn the wheel like three times just to turn like an We originally booked Great White Bear simply because it happened to align with the days that we were in Churchill. However, we were so impressed by our guides, Coral and John, who were so knowledgeable about the flora and fauna in this unique region. We got back to Churchill, warmed up, and got ready for a big night out on the town. Jessica is literally adding polar bear police into our phone. We're supposed to call that if we see a bear. Jess and I are walking to the pub for open mic night. We have to be back by 10 p.m. You are absolutely not allowed to walk outside after then because of the polar bears. There's nobody on the street right now. It feels pretty spooky. I think I would literally poop my pants if I saw a polar bear walking through the streets. I am on high alert right now. This scared the absolute out of me. Wow. I looked over and saw that bear and I was like, oh my god, oh my god, I just saw a white bear. Wow, I thought it was a polar bear. Everything that moves, flags, people on bikes, everything scared me. Whenever we travel any place, I always research what the town is known for in terms of its food and I wasn't able to figure out why, but Churchill is specifically known for the Borealis Burger at the Tundra Pub, which is a veggie burger made out of lentils, rice, and some other goodies, as well as there's avocado, hummus, lettuce, tomato, so I figured why don't we give it a try. It also happens to be open mic night, which sounded kind of fun. It has kind of an earthy flavor. It's on a focaccia roll and the bread is super good and Justin and I are kind of fanatics about how bread makes a sandwich. Just got back to our Airbnb and I think that's like a polar bear alarm going off. It's 10 p.m exactly right now. That means that the polar bear patrol is off. Yes, yeah. It's good timing that we got back here. How crazy is it that we're at a place that has an alarm that goes off every night at 10? Today we're going to be exploring the town of Churchill, starting with coffee. There's two different coffee shops that serve lattes in town, so we chose the Lazy Bear Lodge. It is freaking windy today, so we could definitely use one soon. Let's go. While Churchill is mostly known for polar bears and voluver whales, it actually was home to the pre-Dorset and Inuit people dating back all the way to 3000 BC when they came here to plant caribou and seals. Churchill was actually settled in 1717 by the English, largely as a base for the Hudson Bay Company to control the North American fur trade. Since then, it's served a variety of other functions, including as a U.S. and Canadian military base, as well as a grain shipping port for the entire world. All that being said, all of those industries have left, so basically the town mostly relies on tourism. One of the bucket list things that you have to do in Churchill is get your passport stamped with this adorable polar bear stamp. But we are terrible travelers and we forgot our passports. So we're gonna kind of shop around some of the gift shops to find a cool postcard and kind of use that as our makeshift passport for the day. We love getting cool stamps in our passports, so we were bummed that we had forgotten ours. So if you happen to remember yours, simply head to the post office and enjoy your very own Churchill polar bear stamp. Passport stamp was a success. Now we're gonna head over to the largest structure in all of Churchill, the complex. It is a truly massive building. It's the school, the library, the swimming pool, the hospital, the curling rink, a gymnasium, a fitness center, gift shops, and so many more things. We're gonna go inside because A, it's very windy and B, we heard there's a very fun piece of equipment that we want to check out. The complex offers a lot including a pretty spectacular piece of art, a polar bear shaped statue that you literally access through the butt. Well this is a very interesting structure. Wow. Oh man. Are you ready? When our Airbnb host told us that there was a slide in the complex that you go on through its butt, we were like, of course we have to check that out. Okay. That's pretty fun. Behind me there are likely dozens of polar bears along the coast of the Hudson Bay. You'll notice these two signs saying not to go past it. There are two rules here in Churchill that are very important. Abide by the signs and you must be inside by 10 p.m. because the polar bear alert are no longer driving around protecting you and polar bears could attack you. You've already seen the outside of the V-Rail station but inside is a Parks Canada visitor center that's absolutely worth exploring. In case you missed last week's video, because of Churchill's extremely remote location, the only way that you can get here is either by plane or a long train ride. The most popular time for visitors to come to Churchill is either from mid-June through mid-August when up to 60,000 beluga whales come into the Hudson Bay or from mid-October through mid-November which is when we're here to see the polar bears. One important thing to note about Churchill is that accommodations here are extremely limited, especially on the more affordable side. So if you're on a budget at all and want to come to Churchill yourself, I'd strongly recommend booking as far in advance as possible. We booked our accommodations over 10 months in advance and the cheapest accommodations were still totally sold out. Our final stop of the day and one of the best things to do in Churchill is the Itsanitak Museum. It's home to one of the finest and largest collections of pre-Dorset and Inuit artifacts in the entire world. Better yet, it's free although donations are accepted. Some of these artifacts are more than 2,000 years old. It's just so wild to think of people living here creating art amongst these incredibly harsh conditions and even polar bears. It's just mind-blowing to me. You can explore Churchill in a few hours but still, we were really impressed by the town, especially given its remote location and tiny population. After spending the afternoon walking around, we geared up for our own private polar bear expedition the following day. We were hoping we'd get to see a few more bears on this tour, especially a mom and a cub. This morning we're going on our last and final tour in Churchill with Sub-Arctic Tours. It is the only Inuit-owned tour company in all of Minnetoba. The first tour that we went on with Great White Bears, they have the special kind of arctic rover as well as a permit to go into the Churchill Wildlife Management Area. There's only three tour companies that are allowed to do that and otherwise people just drive you around vans or trucks basically on the same roads that you could drive on. So I'm really curious to see how it stacks up because it's a lot more expensive than renting a car for a day. It's our last day in Churchill. Just gonna have a private polar bear expedition. Leroy, how long have you been in Churchill? Born and raised here. Very cool. It sounds like we're the right guy. So we're at the wreckage site of Miss Piggy, a cargo plane that crash landed here outside of the city limits of Churchill. Leroy is going up to the high ground with a shotgun. To have a look around. That is crazy. This is probably the first armed tour I think I've ever been on where someone is protecting us with a shotgun. I wanted to see Miss Piggy but we didn't have a rental car so it's cool that like this tour is kind of neat because he just basically said like let me know where you want to get out and explore a little bit more so we wanted to get out and explore here. The plane wing is covered in a sheet of ice. There is Leroy behind Jess standing guard on the high ground with a shotgun just in case a bear approaches. Pure ice. Here I'm gonna set the camera down here just in case you fall. Are you okay? It's like really sharp so don't slide through that. Boy wow. Okay this is maybe not safe. Careful. You got it? You got it? Okay. Wow. I'm gonna go check inside this plane. Wow. That's so cool. Wow. You can see all the way up front to the cockpit. Behind me is the polar bear holding facility. It's an old military building that's been converted into a jail for polar bears. It was built in 1982 to keep problematic polar bears who are visiting the town of Churchill out of Churchill. Before that they would have been killed. It has 28 cells, five of which are air conditioned just in case the polar bears are captured in the summertime. They'll be held here for about 28 days then they'll be tranquilized flown 40 miles north and dropped off along the coastline. It's not a very fun time for them. They're literally just sitting in a cell. They don't feed them and that's not untypical for a polar bear to go the entire summer without eating anyway but I think it's a much better alternative to killing them. Since the program's inception over 2,000 bears have been handled by the Manitoba conservation staff with a record being 176 in one season set in 2003. Behind me is a live bear trap that they use for capturing polar bears that make their way into town. We have this large guillotine door and a culvert that the bears climb inside. There is a bait at the end of the trap. They'll find their way in here. This bait is doped up with seal oil. Once they start pulling on this the culvert door will fall down in place and the entire culvert trap is on a trailer with wheels. They'll tow it to the jail, put them in a cage, and that's where they'll be for the next month. Oh wow yeah there's a whole herd of people. Oh there they are Jess. They're right there. So that's two cubs? Yeah. We just found a mom and two cubs and the cubs are so cute. That's pretty extraordinary Leroy. I could watch bears all day. That's really great to hear you're not tired of it. I was hoping we get to see mom and cubs today. Oh yeah she just did a little readjust. So we're in polar bear alley right now. We found another bear. Right behind me is a male polar bear. He's sleeping right now but every once in a while he'll pop his head up and as far as we can tell he looks pretty big. It's kind of insane to think that there's a polar bear probably like 200 yards away from me and we're just standing outside of our pickup truck right now. He's currently pretty sleepy as with the other bears we've seen today. They're currently in their walking hibernation so they're all kind of lethargic and sort of laying around but every once in a while he'll pick his head up and he's massive. It's just so insane to me that like just right behind me is a freaking polar bear. Jess that's so cool. I'm like slightly scared that he's gonna get up at some point and wander over here but also pretty adorable to see him stretching and rolling around. He is so much more active which is I guess relative. He's also just laying. He's also just laying down but at least he's like every minute or so he'll like stick his head up and flop around a little. Oh Jessica he's standing up. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Leroy you gotta let me know when this is unsafe. When it starts coming towards us. This feels so unnatural. Wow. Okay. Do you want me to walk over there? The bear got up and was walking around and stretching. We're like oh is he gonna come over here and he literally walked like 10 feet from where he was sleeping and then just passed out again. He did a pretty massive calf stretch. He walked up on the rock and just kind of like stuck his foot all over. Oh he's doing another cute little speedy guy. He's like doing uh paint me like one of your french girls pose. This bear loves to pose. He loves to like lay on his side like a dog and all I want to do is just rub his tummy. I don't think he would like that. This goofus was definitely our favorite polar bear during our time in Churchill and we have since started to affectionately refer to him as Bairt Reynolds. We're driving around for the afternoon and we just saw a mom and two more babies. They're like maybe 50 to 100 feet off the road just sleeping. Staring at you right now. Most of the bears we've seen today have been pretty lazy so when they move their head or do basically anything we like absolutely freak out. We were so stoked to get to see multiple polar bear cubs. In total we wound up seeing 11 polar bears thanks to Leroy. We'd absolutely recommend booking with Subarctic if you're headed to Churchill. It was such a special way to end our time in this unique place and Churchill even sent us off our final night with a spectacular show of the northern lights.