The Dancing Bears

The training of Dancing Bears was a practice, not so long ago, so cruel that only reading about it can make your hair stand on end.
If you are by chance interested to learn more, you can check here

Young bears are captured in the wild, separated from their mothers, and taught by a trainer to become dancing bears in conditions of unimaginable cruelty. Source

I've never seen a dancing bear, but most people around The Balkans probably have.I've heard of them but I had no idea how cruel was the way they treated them.

After a whole summer of thinking about bears, taking photos of bear poops, talking with local people about bears and screaming "Bear, bear, we are coming" around the mountains, it was time to visit the Park of the Dancing Bears close to Belitsa town in Rila Mountains. I've seen bears only in some zoos and I was curious to see them in a more natural environment.

The park was created 18 years ago with the help of Four Paws and its goal is to offer a more normal home and care for these poor animals. It is 180 km away from Sofia and 12 km away from Belitsa, which is close to another famous mountain resort here - Bansko in Pirin Mountain, that's why and because it is the only place like that in Bulgaria, the park is also highly visited

Also 12 km away from Belitsa high in the mountains there is a small almost forgotten communistic and old ski resort - Semkovo, where I first started skiing several years ago, because my university has a small ski center there and we used to go every year with my colleagues, and later to practice ski-touring with a local guy that is a good friend of mine. I love that part of Rila very much so I was happy to go back one more time both in Belitsa, and after visiting the Park of the Dancing Bears, also in Semkovo for a quick walk and to see that lovely place for the first time without snow.

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Belitsa

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On our way to the park. Pirin Mountain in front of us.

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The Park of the Dancing Bears

When we arrived there, the people from the park told us that most of the bears were already asleep for the winter and that the previous group saw only two of them. There are 25 bears in the park - 18 females (they are usually twice smaller than the male ones, that's why they were more suitable for training) and 7 males. 3 of the bears are from Serbia, one from Albania and the rest of them from Bulgaria.

The first bear that we saw was funny at first as she was walking 2 meters back and 2 meters forth all the time. But then the guide told us that she was trained to do that every time when she saw people around her. I felt like I was in a mental health hospital. At first I thought that keeping them there and showing them to the people was awful but the truth is that they were captured very young and they are forever damaged, they don't have much skills to survive in nature, as they have spent most of their lives around people. If they just let them go they will go again close to people to search for food that's why they are much safer there and probably that's the best home they could have now.

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The first bear walking back and forth

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The instruments for training the bears were awfully painful for them.

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The park

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The second bear was standing at one place far from the others and smelling her paw the whole time we were there. The guide told us she was very shy.

And the third bear was blind :(. Her "trainers" used to give her alcohol to dance more.

There was also one more bear without one leg but she was hiding from us, the other ones were sleeping, including the biggest one of them - a 400kg male.

I saw that park as a monument of human cruelty. Sorry if I made you sad.

Thank you for reading.