Arrival in Moscow - 4 January message

The following message was posted on the forum website by Kostas on 4 January:

..So! we finally got to Moscow! We managed not to pay any excess luggage costs at the airport leaving Greece. With us at the airport were the President of the Hellenic Speleological Federation, Kostas Zoupis with his son Asteri. In addition, Niki Hatzilia and Kostas Iatrou were also with us from early on.

At the airport of the frozen and snowed-uder Moscow, we were picked up by Ilia Zharkov who put us up at his house.

He re-confirmed that the team's mission would be the surveying of the cave from -1440m to -2080m and possibly into the old side route which leads to -1710m.

All that troubles us now is the border crossing into George and the weather conditions in the area.

Will everything be OK for us to cross the borders as planned? Will the helicopter be able to fly, or will the weather be bad and we'll get stuck in Sochi.

We're setting off soon for the airport and we'll be leaving beautiful Moscow behind - we're flying for Sochi in 3 hours.

In one or two days, we'll know.

P.S.: We'd like to thank Iakovos Karakostanoglou and Stelios Varipatis for their wishes communicated to us by phone.