Mt Etna

We woke to a beautiful morning, with Etna showing the dustings of the first snows of the season. As we breakfasted we watched the ever changing face of the mountain. It was lovely.

Let me rewind a bit and say our dinner last night was wonderful. Angelo and Cristina are a couple who decide on an alternative lifestyle and quit professional careers to take up eco farming on an abandoned olive plantation at Etna's feet. The meal was made with food grown on the farm, wherever possible, and where not they sourced stuff from other like minded souls. As an example the flat bread they had made was from flour grown and ground by the people we visited at Cava D'Ispica, yes, the cave miller. We shared the meal with them and with a WWOOF (pronounced woofer) guy from Ireland who is working here.....to build muscles and get a tan, as advised by his girlfriend. A four course home made and cooked meal and a lovely chat.

Time shifting back, we headed out after breakfast and headed up the mountain. Well after picking up some diesel additive our car is warning us about. Car shops everywhere are the same, guys lounging about with bits of hopelessly rusting mechanisms looking for a cheap solution.

This side of Etna is the skiing side, so the road up was quite good and there was plenty of parking an a few of the shops were open.

We started with a walk, and as the paths are not well marked, we ended up walking up a ski slope. Bloody hard work and Marjan ended up at the top sitting and puffing. Well we were at Mt Kosciusko height by this time so there was a good reason to puff.

if you look carefully you can see 3 cows

Stuff does not last here

We decided to head back and look for an alternative approach.

A 4WD drive up the mountain was just the ticket.

We were not driven to the top (3,300m) as apparently there was zero visibility and a gale. So we were taken to a crater at 2,700m. I am afraid the photos to show the view are too ordinary to show, it was just impossible to get scale. Anyway, our young enthusiastic guide took us down into the crater to see the steam vents and even put our hand in to warm them up. The rocks around the vents were warm, several people used them as hand warmers.

We then took a road to another crater.This was part of the 2002 eruption that came within 5Km of Linguaglossa, the main local town. The eruption created a  series of craters in a line, called a button chain, sounds better in Italian. Apparently there are over 300 craters on Etna, with new ones appearing all the time. They are so blase about it all.

When I asked her to come into shot, Marjan could not look down.

The weather began to close in really quickly, and our guide started to get us off the path as she was worried about lightning up at these heights.

So back down we headed in a 4WD with no demister and a non-functioning windscreen wiper in the rain with visibility down to nothing. The driver was making light of it but it looked quite hairy. Hairier still for the folk walking back down in the rain and wind and cloud.

By the time we got down it was steady rain and the odd lighting bolt. By the time we got back to our digs it was teeming rain and an incredible sound and light show.

We however, are safe and cozy....thanks for asking.