A:

We were collected right at the door as arranged in the four wheel drive for our tour of Mt Etna. Our guide was Gianni and there were two Catanese girls (M: Who had never been on the mountain) and an American man and his grandfather (M: Tennessee and Kentucky, y'all) also on the tour. Our guide was fantastic and the other four were really nice people and we got along really well all day. Gianni is an electrical engineer and has lived in London but has a passion for volcanoes and so does these tours now for a living. We stopped and got out of the car several times.....

M:

Beginning with Aci Trezza - you can zoom in on the map north of Aci Castello - the fabled site of Ulysses' encounter with the Cyclops - whom Gianni explained was really Etna. Makes sense when you think about it! You can see the treacherous rocks (old volcanic plugs) in the pictures.

A:

Each time we stopped, Gianni explained various features of the landscape to us including what can be plainly seen of the remains of the various eruptions that have hit Catania.His passion was very clear - not to mention his grasp of the technical details - and in English.

The rubble from the eruption in the early 1990s now has lichen growing on it but little else. We walked on this for quite some time.

M

It takes 10 years for the lava to cool and then 10 more for the various harmful minerals to leach out before even the lichen will grow. Something like 400 years to come back to "Normal".

A:

The first lava flow we saw had been quite slow - at 20 metres per hour and an intact house next to it was described by Gianni as a lucky house. The local people have erected a statue here to give thanks to Our Lady for saving their village. Later we saw more growth happening after eruptions that occurred in the seventies, and then 1902 and 1923 with even more growth of course. An eruption in 1928 destroyed the village of Marscolini.

These days the experts who are keeping an eye on Etna from the university of Catania are able to monitor it using satellite technology and will be able to predict when an eruption will take place but not where. This area was devastated by a major eruption in 1669 and it wiped a good part of Catania out. Unfortunately we were unable to see the spectacular scene of the main eruptions of the Bove valley after the exciting and very bumpy 4wd ride up to it as the cloud cover obscured what promised to be a lovely view. Gianni suggested we wait a little while as the conditions can change really fast but this didn't happen so we came back down and went on our way. (We didn't realise till we read the brochure that evening that in fact Gianni replaced this part of the tour with the visit to the craters and lava flows which is meant for the longer all day tour not our half day tour. So he was very generous with his time but didn't let on.) This variation to the tour was unforgettable. The weather was much better at Monte Nero. Gianni drove to the limit permitted by vehicles at the edge of the national park (a ski field in winter) and then we walked on flat land, then along rocky lava terrain, then along flat land that had what must have been very tough grasses growing and then around the perimeters of extinct craters and lava covered paths.

The ground was precipitous at best and I am really glad I have such sturdy and comfortable shoes. I really don't know how I did it, one false move and any of us could have been gone forever down a crater. (M: Or at least for a limited but very uncomfortable ride, as we plunged to our deaths!) Gianni told us only that they were deep but throwing a stone down some of them, you could not hear it land. A group of nine Germans died when they got too close to an active crater and an unexpected eruption occurred. (M: In Australia or America we would all have been wearing safety harnesses and have signed liability waivers. No such trivialities here!) Walking over all this was particularly scary as the rock you chose to land on would often give way. I made a comment about Gianni's ability to clamber nimbly over these rocks and he heard me and called back that he had been trained by a mountain goat. The only sign of non -plant life in close proximity to the craters were lady birds and Gianni told us they keep the pine trees, that we could see further on, alive as they eat the moths that would destroy the trees. The whole area has been protected since 1987 as part of a natural park and so no trees have been planted, the whole area is natural.

M:

It was, to use the hackneyed expression, a real lunar landscape. Black basalt - sometimes in flows, sometimes in rubble, sometimes in the form of larger rocks that had been lava bombs in their prime - but black as far as the eye could see, sometimes relieved by tinges of red. In the middle distance we could see the steam coming out of quietly slumbering craters, mixing with the rapidly descending clouds just reminding us that the old girl is still alive.) As we walked back to the 4WD, we were given evidence of how quickly the weather can change on Etna. Within 20 minutes we went from bright sunlight to quite thick fog.

A:

But wait dear reader, there is more! We returned to the car and it was about 3pm by this time so I asked about a toilet for me and the two girls. Unfortunately the one Gianni pointed to was closed. He was very apologetic about that.

Gianni had a brioche and a drink for each of us which we had standing by the car in the mist which descended as we left the top of the mountain so we were lucky to have this experience and see all that we did after missing out earlier. One more stop was to the lava caves (Le grotte dei ladri - the Thieves' Caves) where we donned helmets and had a torch each. The climb down to the cave was also very dicey with no rail and we had to go down backwards or sidewards and grab the narrow steps as we went so I did this very slowly! It was worth the trouble as inside was a cave that was known as the thieves cave for obvious reasons. What a good place to hide your booty. In the days before refrigeration it was also used to store ice and snow during the winter as it is so cold and this was sold to the locals in the spring, and some was even sold in Malta. All this stopped when the Americans invented the refrigerator, Gianni explained, and at this point the Americans apologised. We left the cave via an easier climb and Gianni sped us home on expressway stopping briefly at Milo (M: the town not the drink!) for a much needed toilet break.(I think that nearly seven hours may have been a record for me!) What an amazing day and at least two hours longer than we thought we were going to spend! I don't know how far we walked but so much of it was over very rocky terrain. We scratched a meal together from our supplies at home and slept well that night!