Italy with Kids - Mt Etna

30 Sept 2008

Ky and Liam opted for a quiet day at the apartment, while Joseph and I headed for Mount Etna. We'd thought Liam wouldn't like the climbing, but as it turned out he could have come along.

Following some fairly easy signposting, even through a labyrinth of little streets in a number of small towns, Joseph and I were soon driving up the side of the mountain. We really were in luck today: the clouds cleared and gave me an excellent view of the summit on the way up.



Now, a little word of advice:
I'd become accustomed to interpreting Italian signs with their english equivalents, and many of the words are derived from common backgrounds alt = halt, stazione = station, tutti = total. The literal translations of course don't always work, for example a roadsign advises to slow down because the road is "distresso", which I interpret as distressed, in other words uneven or broken (which it was). But this interpretation trick didn't work at S R, the start of the Funivia for Mount Etna. I faithfully headed up to the large building labelled 'Excursione', thinking that this would be the place to book an excursion
. as it turned out, that was only the funivia tickets, and despite plenty of warning signs in english, german and french, none of them mentioned anything about going back down the road to book a guide to visit the summit, nor did they mention how far the jeeps went. So Joseph and I hopped on the funivia and had a lovely ride up to the first platform at 'Montagna'. We then saw a line of people waiting for large jeep-type buses, but the jeeps seemed to drive just around the corner (and out of view), so I said to Joseph we should walk. Wow it was cold! We'd come prepared for a hike but not for the cold, so we rented a jacket at the station for Joseph for €2 (and should have rented boots also), then proceeded to walk up the mountain.
To be brief, Mount Etna is a volcanic mountain. We walked on black sandy and rocky material interspersed with patches of snow. The mountain has many craters leaving the landscape pockmarked and looking like an alien planet. This picture was taken near 2,000m up.












About an hour and a half later we reached the second stop, where the jeeps went to, near the Philosofer's Tower.
There we joined all the other sensible people (who'd taken the jeep) and walked around and through one of the nearby craters, still letting forth a little steam. Joseph and I explored another area with brilliant rock colours, in yellow, white, green, orange and dark red. The best part, was the rocks were warm!












I found out later that you go to the guide hut at 9:30am, pay €60, you can have a day trip right to the northern peak (there are three upper peaks). The walk ends at 4:30pm.

We took the jeep back to the top of the funivia, then walked down to the base. The walk was tricky: there are large cleared paths for skiiing but they are covered in shoe-sized and smaller rubble that is very tricky to walk on, and quite wearying. We stopped part way down for a snack.



We spent some time perusing all the souvenir shops, where we found an extensive assortment of crystals, geodes, black lava sand statuettes, and the usual sicilian fare. I picked up a dramatic looking blue crystal aggregate, that the shop owner explained were real crystals from one of the caves at the top of Mt Etna, but with the crystals dyed to give them colour. Joseph had purchased a set of blue crystals in Taormina for €8 the other day, and now purchased a teal coloured set for €5. He predicted that if we looked through all the other stores, we would find a set for €2, and sure enough we did! However the €2 set was not as good quality as the sets we'd purchased.

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