A Tour To Mount Etna

Today we took an option tour to Mt Etna. .

Almost all of the people in our group decided to go on this excursion. We left around 8 in the morning and did not get back until after 1. The drive from the ocean road to the volcano's south parking lot took about 75 minutes. We picked up our local guide and then started the long climb. We stopped in one of the small towns that was threatened during a recent eruption but the lave flow halted about 4 kilometres from it. The parking lot is about half way up the mountain at around 5500 feet.

Although the “tourist” season is apparently over there were plenty of people at the site. It is a long weekend in Sicily and the guide suggested that many families were out enjoying the nice weather. The weather has been nice the entire time while we have been here. Warm sunny days and cool nights. From the parking lot, it is short easy walk to see the string of popup (button) volcanoes.

The area looks similar to a very small fissure eruption zone. The colour of the ash changed from one location to another. Normally lava is black. Most of the area is that dark sort of surreal landscape. The last cone in the sequence was black as might be expected. The one that we were walking on was a rusty colour. This is due to the iron content in the material which has started to weather. We had a chance to walk the rim of one of the cones but we were not able to go very far because our tour was only scheduled as a half day tour.

It is a very eerie landscape but there are a few low grasses that are starting to grow on some of the lava from older eruptions. The area supports many grape growing areas as the soil is very fertile. The lava contains a variety of minerals. There are a number of lava tubes in the area and we did see one on our trip back. We have encountered a similar landscape before in the Craters of the Moon National park in western U.S.A. The group gathered for cocktails before dinner where we did a few simple line dances. Go figure.