Elbrus Expedition Dispatch

June 27, 2017 – We Made it to Mineralnye Vody!

It’s Tuesday, this must be Mineralnye Vody, we made it to the Caucasus Mountains, at least all the way south to the airport Mineralnye Vody. We still have about a 4 hour drive to get to the 7 Summits lodge and we are definitely a long ways from the city already. Yesterday’s Moscow city tour was amazing, the team took off with Larissa, of course they went to Red Square and the Kremlin.

We also went to the museum where the old monuments from Soviet leaders are, we did not go to Christ Savior Cathedral because recently remains of St Nicolas had been brought from Italy and there are actually a few hundred thousand pilgrims that have been making the trip to Christ the Savior Cathedral to see this. We did see the changing of the guard at the Kremlin.

Takis arrived from Athens, a very short flight. I met up with him at the Hyatt and he got over just by chance and also saw the changing of the guard. This morning was a big day; we met for breakfast, a great breakfast at the Park Hyatt Moscow. We had just enough time as Larissa had already lined up the queue and she had got us cut into the line to see Lenin's Mausoleum. We filed pass there, we got on the bus and Moscow traffic was up to its usual slow crawl. We were a bit rushed going thru the domestic terminal this year, a bit tough but we made it!