Thursday 23 May
Expedition day today, the great ascent of the south face of Mount Etna. Most of the ascent was by mini-bus, and we didn’t get to the top, but it was further up than anyone else I know. Also we didn’t have Sherpas to carry our bags and I had to film everything myself on my phone.
We met our guide Ernesto by the Roman Amphitheatre that we sussed out yesterday. Five others joined us, a family from Toronto and a charming lady from Cape Town. It took a very pleasant hour of driving upward through pretty towns with narrow winding streets. Like all Sicilians, Ernesto drove like Mad Max trying to escape wild men in armoured quad bikes, very fast and with great confidence.
After an hour of zig zagging we reached base camp, Refugio Giovanni Sapienza. Ernesto takes his work as a mountain guide very seriously, and provided us with walking sticks (hiking variety, not broken leg variety) and gaiters. I have never worn gaiters before, but they are tight cuffs you wear round your calves to stop grit getting in your boots.
Then we walked up narrow tracks following Ernesto. The path was steep, narrow, and not solid underfoot. The surface was black volcanic cinders, surounded by cushions of attractive but spikey vegetation, definitly not for sitting on.
We plodded up and up and up until we got to the top of a ridge. We were treated to a fantastic view of the smoking summit of Etna, streaked with sulphure and a few patches of snow. Beneath us was the Val de Bove, an enormous expanse of black volcanic cinders hundred of metres long and wide covering a huge area of the slope of the volcano.
At the top I found we had walked about a mile from the minibus. But it was all up hill, without Sherpas or complicated ladders n’shit.
The descent was less arduous, and we looked over Catania far below all the time. The last big eruption was in 2001, and the lava flows destroyed the road where our van is parked. At one stage we trudged through thick soft black sand, like a Gothic Evil sand dune.
At the end I treated us both to a Magnum icecream, sadly they didn’t have the ones with nuts on the outside.
It was a slightly challenging hike because it was narrow and steep on the way up, but worth it for the fantastic views. It cost 62 Euros each, and I think it was worth it.
Back in Catania we went to the Villa Bellini gardens which are very pretty with a great view of the volcano. Just up the road (Etna) we visited the Ortico Botanico, which looked unloved in the same way that the castle in Ortigia is. I think Sicily just doesn’t have much money for public spaces, it’s one of the poorest parts of Italy.
And finally, some photos to prove that two and a half thousand years of civilisation doesn’t always work in Sicily.
timharnesstravels 