SPECIAL FEATURE: JAPAN
Shiretoko Peninsula, Hokkaido
EYEWITNESS THE END OF THE WORLD
A storm is brewing on the Sea of Okhotsk. The horizon is blotted by fog and a cold wind is churning the dark tides. It’s far from ideal boating weather, and the fact that my captain has the weatherbeaten face of a man who’s survived a dozen tempests, is doing little to calm my nerves. He’s steering our repurposed fishing skiff out of Rausu harbour and into the choppy, open waters off the Shiretoko peninsula. Bouncing along on the waves beside us is another dinghy full of travellers, headed up by Mai, the guide for this bear spotting expedition. “It takes experts to survive and
navigate these conditions. Years of experience. Other operators have called off their trips today, but you can trust us!” she’d assured me back on land, as we struggled into heavy-duty fishermen’s jackets and waxed trousers. Our two boats head north, tracing the
cragged coast where clusters of fishing huts quickly peter out into thick forests and sheer cliffs formed by ancient lava flows. Waterfalls appear like delicate threads and plunge into frothy shallows. Looming out of the mist are the snow-capped volcanoes that form the humped spine of Shiretoko National Park. It’s scenery straight out of The Lost World; I’m half expecting a pterodactyl to burst from the tree line. Mai’s voice is piped into our boat
via wireless loudhailer. It’s crackly and at times barely discernible over the howl of the wind. I think she’s saying, “Hold on tight.” The engine revs and we power around a sea stack full of nesting cormorants. Here, an eerie mist boils up from the sea. The lower rock is darker, scraped and scarred — eroded by the driſt ice that clogs the channel every winter. We speed onwards, spotting sea eagles and rock formations
shaped like petrified monsters. Atop a promontory stands a lonely, blood-red archway. A fellow passenger explains that it’s a shrine for the fishermen who have died here, shipwrecked or lost. She adds, somberly, “there’s a local legend about a captain who killed and ate his crew as they driſted, starving, through the fog for months.” Before the full horror of the story
registers, there’s a cry from the other boat: Mai’s spotted an Ezo brown bear, or higuma in the local tongue, on the shore. Both vessels slow down and chug near — so near, in fact, that I don’t need binoculars. These notoriously aggressive bears can weigh up to half a tonne, and encountering one of the 600 who roam Shiretoko is every hiker’s worst nightmare. Anyone setting off into the woods is advised to tie a kuma- yoke bear bell to their rucksack to deter the beasts. But from the boat I can get
Adventure September 2018 61
IMAGE: ALAMY
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