Fifty thousand birds and a few wild horses can't be wrong

The Pape [PAH-peh] Nature Preserve in Latvia, just north of the Lithuanian border, runs inland from the sea to include sand dunes, marshes, and forests within its 22 square-mile area. As you can see in the video, if you follow the wooden plank path through the mossy ground just a few yards away from a bird-watching tower in the trees, you will pop up on a dazzling sandy beach running north and south as far as the eye can see. In the fall, about 50,000 birds rest in the reserve.

Farther inland you will find wild meadows and dense undergrowth. In addition to moose, deer, wolves, and lynx which are native to the area, European bison, feral cattle and horses have been introduced to the preserve, partly to graze for conservation purposes. But most visitors who are drawn to Pape by the natural fauna come for seasonal birdwatching. The area is an internationally significant breeding, migrating and wintering site for many species, some endangered, of birds and bats. 

Whenever I describe places along Latvia’s western coastline, I can’t emphasize enough how important the legacy of the Cold War was in shaping what you see in front of you. For centuries this coast was an east-west crossroads: for Viking traders and raiders, the native seagoing Curonian tribe (Latvian: Kurshi), late medieval crusaders, the towns of the Hanseatic League, and so on. Tsarist Russia treasured the Baltic region as its window to the West and as an educated, economically developed part of its empire.

​But after the Second World War, with all three Baltic countries annexed to the USSR and undergoing full Stalinization, the entire western coastline became a militarized zone, with beachside residential or commercial development forbidden. Some small fishing villages were emptied of their inhabitants, and travel to and from coastal cities was strictly controlled. At night, tractors would drag wide rakes down the beach to detect footprints in the sand, whether from people hoping to escape westward, or spies landing from the sea. While no one misses the days of Soviet drabness and suffocating surveillance, the result now is a beautiful open seaside terrain-- especially now that the area has been cleared of stray landmines and similar hazards.

Elsewhere in postwar Europe, as in the U.S., attractive beachfronts were steadily built up with houses, hotels, and condos, and restrictions were added later in order to salvage what was left for public access. By 1991, when the Baltic countries regained their independence, everyone understood the irreplaceable value of an unspoilt shoreline. And so in remote seaside locations like Ziemupe, Jūrkalne, and Kolka, the overnight accommodations constructed in the past 30 years are tucked behind the pine forests, away from the dunes and the beach bluffs. 

Seaside locales like Pape are favorites for vacationers from Estonia, Latvia, and especially Lithuania, which has a much shorter coastline relative to its population. As you stroll around the Pape Nature Preserve, the license plates outside the nearby beach houses, vacation apartments, and modestly priced hotels will often mostly be Lithuanian (LT). But even in peak vacation season, this corner of the Baltic coast is clean and uncrowded, with plenty of room to wander undisturbed.