Minerol Vody

... Spelled something like that.
Anyway we made it down here from st. Petersburg. The flight was a bit scary to put it mild.

Since we've landed in Minerol Vody which is located in soth western Russia, it's a been a very surreal experience.

After getting our bags we had lunch on the airport premises. The.resturant was located inside the secure terminal which we had to pass metal dectors for, then past ticketing, up some random back stairs, down a hallway, past some administrative office and through 2 sets of heavy wood doors. Here we entered another smoking lounge, and yet even more people smoking. Lunch consisted of two thin slabs of wrinkely mystery meat. One dark slab and one light slab. It was accented by a pile of greasy potato parts and a side salad of cucumber and tomato slices and some week old stale bread. Mmmmmm.

Were now on the bus that will take us to the mountain base camp about 4 hours away in the Baskan Valley region. The bus is ungodly hot. Only about half of the windows slide open and the ones that do are those small horizontal ones. Whenever the bus stops the ambient temperature in here goes up about 30 degrees and I instantly loose another 14 ounces in sweat.

A couple of other guys in our groups bag got lost coming out from atlanta. This morning they had to fly to Moscow to meet up with their bags while we flew to Minerol Vody directly. Luckly when they got to Moscow the bags were actually there. Something that was a bit of a gamble as apparently there were reports they might be in Paris.

Well be in Azau at the base of Mt. Elbrus in about 4 hours. There we will be at about 7000 ft and hopefully much cooler!

Over and out for now.