today at around 07:00 o'clock we were fetched by michael, after we had spent the night in the bear hide of the martinselkosen wildlife centre in pirtivara. he asked what bears we had spotted, and we described them to him, and he in return gave us a little background information and history on some of the bears. for one, there was gandalf, a little gray cub. then there was tapeworm bear, but there was no need to elaborate on that further. another one was asthma bear, a really really very big bear who was breathing very loud, it sounded like he had asthma. over the years they had several bets on him how long he will still make it, but everytime they lost, because he is still alive and pretty active. and there was also tourette bear, who had a hip problem, that forced him to walk with legs more spread than usual. but walking like this in bear body language means to show off in an aggressive way. thus this particular bear ends up being attacked all the time, while he just tries to stay mobile. poor misunderstood him, we felt so sorry for him. when we had returned back to the headquarters we decided to stay for a breakfast. the swiss couple that had spent the night in the hide next to us looked as tired and exhausted as we did. everyone seemed pretty knackered so there was not much talking, everyone was busy with their coffees and breakfast. this was an awesome experience, with so many bears so close in their natural environment, roaming free as they like. of course we were aware the bears are used to humans, and in a sense "trained" to find the treats lain out by michael and janni at the hide spots, but they do so when and how they want. they also were not bothered by the shutter sounds of the cameras or the sounds and smells by us at all. so it definitely was not their first time to do that. but this bear hide night is definitely something we recommend. being so close to the bears is thrilling, amazing, and a tremendous and marvelous experience we would not want to miss anymore. after breakfast and saying farewell we drove to vuonislahta at lake pielinen[01]. there we checked in at the hotel pielinen. we had a shower, which felt so very good; after hours of sweating and sleeping in the hide this was a necessary thing. although physically we were very tired, mentally we were wide awake - we could not sleep. also to retain our sleep-wake-cycle, we tried to stay awake at least until 20:00 o'clock. thus we decided to go to the lake[09-10], borrow the hotels boat that guests can use and row[11-19] around a little. they even gave us life jackets[09] at the reception, which we brought with us to the boat, but then did not put them on. it was too hot for that anyway. the lake was very quiet, and besides another couple in a boat we were the only ones on or in the water. the obligatory waterfowl was there as well as the biting midges. surprisingly, the latter kept to an acceptable extent. soon we gave up and went to our room to finally get some good sleep and recover. the temperature was around 25°C on this mild day full of sunshine and little activity. track for day 14.