And now I must tell you all about the brown bear fiasco. We had wasted alot of the afternoon and evening with torrential rain whenever we stopped so our guide decided to take us up to a deserted village where bears were often seen. Well the heavens opened and it was impossible to see anything so we headed back down into the valley. As soon as we headed down the rain stopped so out we all got to scan the hillsides around us. After about an hour we had all decided that enough was enough, there was nothing to be seen so back on the bus we got. Immediately we head the shout 'BEARS' so out we all piled with our scopes. The guide had a mother and 2 cubs in his scope but he was well over 6ft tall meaning us small ones didn't stand a chance of looking. And then the fiasco began.......
Our guide couldn't give us any directions for anyone to be able to get their scopes onto it, he couldn't say if he was looking at rocks, grass, trees, nothing. We were all asking, quite forcefully, where the heck he was looking as the vista infront of us was huge. He gave no directions, no markers, no obvious rocks, nothing. It was a shambles. And then he couldn't locate the bears in any one elses scopes either.
A birder (without a telescope) had joined our group just to do the Armenian section. He ran to the only scope on the bears and hogged it meaning even the tall ones of the group didn't get a look and then he did the worst thing possible ....he knocked the scope. So, a bear with 2 cubs was on the mountain infront of us and one person out of the ten had seen it. I was absolutely furious, the directions the guide gave were non existent, and even after another hour scanning no-one relocated the bears. A guide worth his salt would have got everyone's scopes on the bears, or the area they were last seen, but no, this guide could do none of that. We stayed until dark. Enough said.
