Pape: Coast guard facilities

Back in the mid to late 1980s, some friends and I went bird-watching. Back then we were called amateur ornithologists. Of course, we were most tempted by the area of the shoreline that was closed to visitors. We got a letter of recommendation from the Latvian Ornithological Association and took it to the Forest Ministry, I believe. We were quickly interviewed about who we were, what we were planning to do, and so on. We were given a permit which allowed us to cross the coastal regime zone’s boundary on multiple occasions and be present in the zone between Mērsrags and the border of Lithuania. Young people with binoculars, notebooks and cameras, of course, were an unusual and undesirable phenomenon on the coastline, and more than once we had to explain what we were doing. Sometimes we hid our inventory under our jackets or in bags, taking it out only when needed. The harshest conflict, as I recall it, was near Pape, where the border guards threatened to confiscate our film. It was bird-watching with a bit of adrenalin. Today, of course, you can bring a telescope to the seashore and watch what you want and as long as you want.