Day 15--Mount Etna

 During the night I got a phone call from Edward Jones office that woke us up.  I thought I had the phone in airplane mode.  It was about 3 am in Sicily.  We were enjoying the fresh fragrant air with the windows open.  Before we fell back to sleep, we heard the explosions of the volcano.  I was thankful for that phone call or we probably would have been so exhausted we wouldn't have woken to hear the volcano. 

We've had excellent weather the entire trip except for a few sprinkles while we were on the bus after leaving Taormina and returning to Zafferana.  Nunzia told everyone that there was a chance of rain around noon for the day we hiked Mount Etna.  Nunzia called the volcano naturalist and the 4 wheel drivers to see if we could begin 30 minutes earlier, it turned out to be a good thing.

Our local nature guide gave us a 30 minute talk on the volcano before we left.  Sorry about the blurry photo.

 Mount Etna is more than 10,000 feet tall and the tallest active volcano in Europe.  Add the fact that it is also one of the most active volcanoes in the world.

Four 4-wheel drive vehicles picked us up to take us to the northern slope.  I didn't expect a big black Mercedes.  Nunzia rode with us and the driver was telling her all the famous people that he's driven around Sicily.  I think that was the first automatic transmission I've seen in Europe.

Here we are at our first stop.  I didn't expect to see all the trees.

Nick is explaining that the lava comes from the fissures not out the top of the volcano.

It was a beautiful day once again.

All eight in our group elected to do the volcano 2.8 mile hike.  

Here's where we started the hike.  The transport company had hiking sticks for everyone.  I did notice they gave Bill and I two sticks while the younger ones in the group only had one stick.

The weather would change in seconds to a light fog and then back to sunshine.

It felt like walking on a deep loose sand beach.  You really sunk in.

We were above 6,000 feet at this point.

The "path" was very narrow and the higher it went there were steep straight down drops on both sides.

I believe this is Gary taking photos.  The last thing I was thinking about was taking photos.

Eureka!  Here's the hole.

I have to say as much as I loved the Fiat 500 ride, the Mafia discussions and all the other things we did, this was something I'll never forget!

As we were hiking back to the vehicles we saw some locals gathering mushrooms near the roadway.  

Bill didn't even wear a jacket but I was comfortable in my rain jacket.  We stopped at local coffee shop for a bathroom stop.  I enjoyed a great cup of hot chocolate.  The European's really know how to make it.

This is what it looked like when we left the coffee shop.  Of course, a few moments later once we started down, the weather cleared up.

We enjoyed a great lunch at a beautiful place on the volcano.  

We saw these goats  between the roads. Back to the hotel and we have a couple of hours before drinks and dinner with drinks.

I started packing the luggage and then it started to rain.  We've been so busy we didn't have time to use the outdoor pool.  I thought this was the time to use the spa facilities of the hotel.  There was an indoor pool, hot tub, sauna, whirlpool and I'm not sure what else.  Then I remembered that we had to leave the hotel the next morning at 3:30 and I didn't want to have a wet swimsuit in the luggage even though I had a waterproof bag.

We all toasted our drinks together the Sicilian way--look them in the eye!
Nunzia wanted to know what people liked and didn't like about the tour.  There were no dislikes.  The appetizers were great.  She then prepared a video of the photos she'd taken during the trip.  I don't know how she had the time. Here's the link:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/GpjcbgGVGcqkusqS6

She gave each of us a gift to remember the trip.  Thank goodness they were small or I wouldn't have been able to put them in the luggage.  There were two cards from the Scoppa deck, a hand painted wine cork, a papyrus painting and a piece of lava from Mount Etna.  The lava went in our display case of items from other trips as soon as I unpacked.

We had a wonderful farewell dinner and no one seemed to want to leave the table.  

Here's Nunzia with Howie, a solo traveler.

 

Here's Gail and Gary who we hope we'll travel with again.

Alain and Viktoriya, who we will see again on a tour.

We were the first to leave since we had an early morning departure. 

I'll finish up the trip in the next blog.

Turtle Safely.......