In the tundra buggy, it goes on safari to the polar bears.
Consumption: One liter per kilometer
The Tundra Buggy's work over ten tons and needs to minus 60 degrees
without complaint
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Under the powerful profile splintered ice. The 1.70 meter tall tyres
roll for hours on permafrost and will not really warm. Smoking rubber
end bordered on the tundra and a small miracle. Even more to tyres and
undercarriage can withstand the sharp-edged base. And the powerful
bite of a polar bear.
We are traveling in the Tundra Buggy, a metal monster, more than ten
tons and is designed for temperatures down to minus 60 degrees,
created for the mobile observation of polar bears. To the predators to
come as close as possible without any risk to life and limb, visitors
climb the buggy for full-day trips. 399 Canadian dollars they pay for
it.
The idea of looking at the furry predators in their natural habitat
in this way, about the nap in the thick algal bed near the coast, the
adventurer Len Smith came in the 60s. Since then, 16 of the vehicles
were built by hand - in the small town of Churchill in northern
Manitoba, a place to which no road leads. Churchill marketed itself as
a "polar bear capital". Hundreds of animals gather at the beginning of
winter in the region around the 800-inhabitant village on the shores
of Hudson Bay and wait for the world is frozen. Here the huge marginal
sea freezes sooner than elsewhere, then the path is smoothed out into
the bay to the seals, the favorite food of polar bears. Previously,
however, continued to pave the way for the hunters traveled in their
own
In the 50s by the military-scale gravel roads now form a perfect
infrastructure for motorized polar bear tourism. On the wooden buggy
terminal, a half-hour drive away from Churchill, George Crombie,
workshop manager at the tour provider Frontiers North Adventures, his
martial appearance. Actually watching the 54-year-olds production and
repair of the tundra buggies. The qualified truck mechanic came back
from Afghanistan four years ago. With cartridge belt and a pump-action
shotgun he stands legs apart and secures the transition from the
shuttle bus into the stroller: "When I say run, then you save the
buggy I have to go out no problem there and take on the polar bears!.
" Polar bears could occur at any time.
The Tundra Buggy, a propane gas stove with a vent pipe thumps like in
Grandma's room. The seats are similar to those in American school
buses, the aisle is only about two feet wide. Before we start, Crombie
opens the hood, a big flap in the aisle: "If a breakdown repair in the
wilderness we from the inside out because of the polar bear would be
too dangerous."
The 15 passengers standing around the opening and look at the 260-hp
turbo six-cylinder engine with 7.6 liters of displacement of the
International brand, as it occurs in U.S. school buses. In the tundra
buggy it is coupled to an automatic controller with three courses and
two-stage gear units, aimed at making the creeper over the rough
terrain.
Jean-Philippe McCarthy, driver and tour guide throws in the engine.
Small groups of conifers pass by slowly, two meters high and 300 years
old. Frozen lakes, there are thousands of them, because you never can
seep water in the permafrost. It goes on hüpfballgroße chunks,
sometimes lies behind the horizon, like a diagonal abroad front
window. The structure of the vehicle gets tangled up with groans, the
engine room door opens a crack. Damp and cold air flows through cracks
into the interior. The hot-packed guests look out.
McCarthy, meanwhile, makes it ever releases the space behind the
wheel. "I let go, including children. What will happen out here?" The
autograph is like driving in the Tundra Buggy actually a children's
game: With gas drives the thing, lifted one foot, it remains standing.
The steering, however, requires more exercise. After countless
revolutions of the wheel just seem to swing the skinny wheels. Only
then something of a reaction is felt, it's almost like you maneuver a
large ship. And then the cockpit: The sawed from thin wood veneer
instrument panel is similar in its appeal of a home-made kitchen. The
ads are few and far between, and labeled with a permanent marker. The
pace has to be estimated, is not it a tachometer.
To keep the diesel engine in a good mood, tricks are necessary. The
designers have implanted a fuel heater, which heats the cooling water
in the state. "And we use diesel first rate, we add the additives.
This is not the fuel to low temperatures in cold weather," said
Crombie. Consumption is clearly subordinate to the reliability of the
tundra. 20 liters of a buggy the day burning. At a distance 20 to 24
kilometers of thirst is thus up to 100 liters per 100 kilometers.
After all, was designed with consideration for the animals: "We build
the subfloor so that the polar bears at play can not hurt - no sharp
corners and edges."
So much effort is of course only be operated, because the proximity of
the Furry wanted to be buggy. On the "Polar Bear Point," the Churchill
of the farthest point of this tour, it's ready. An adult polar bear
sniffing the tyre of a residential trailer. And then makes males. A
woman dares with her head above the parapet of the high platform at
the stern and the animal looks into the dark eyes.
Without the Tundra Buggy Churchill would not be what it is today,
Crombie says of the last outpost, which was after the withdrawal of
the military almost given up. But without the polar bears and the
Tundry buggies would be meaningless. The furry protagonists, say
locals as well as scientific observers will have less. Because of
global warming they have less time for their hunting on the later and
later freezing and earlier re-melting ice of Hudson Bay. "Things
remain as they are in Churchill," says workshop manager Crombie about
the leisurely life there. But since he has probably mistaken.
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