Mt Etna

1/11  AGRITURISMO - "ETNA WINE"

Soft rain & the sounds of the motorway safely outside the gates helped an easy sleep.

Refreshed, we jumped up to our 10BX & school and as Angela left for her school, we shared cuddles and gifted her our red ukulele together with one of Kel’s Pointy People drawings. With the rain teaming down, we chugged purposefully, methodically & easily up the side of Etna towards the CLOSED information office in Linguaglossa, in the wake (literally!) of a truck, splashing torrents of water into front doors and over small cars.  

The poor infrastructure here is such that the roads function as drains with evidence of patchwork near-enough-is good-enough periodical repair.  In conflict are the BMWs, Minis, Audis and an abundance of smart on the inside shops, full to bursting with goodies & snappy cafe counters.  Different priorities or struggling to get by?  The facades of most buildings, if complete, are in a very poor & dirty state.  Is this a lack of council funding, having to deal with multiple Etna eruptions or having plans greater than finances allows? The landscape is really unusual with large mounds of hardened lava flow, pumice stone terrace walls of Basalt, and almost black soil.  The building density thins out giving way to a plateau of rich with fields of autumn coloured vineyards.  We found our way to another agriturismo - “Etna Wine” and parked up in the low clouds & drizzle alongside the cellar, overlooking vines with Etna above us in the cloud.  With better weather forecast for tomorrow, we simply read, had tea, a last Italian lesson, a big late lunch of spinach, cheese, tuna & bean pasta, another coffee, heard back form Elaine with banking details and updated the blog entries.  The kids played non-stop first for almost 2 hours with BKs on their bed and then with the soccer pinball machine by the pool - shame about the weather; would’ve been a great swimming spot.

As dark crept in, we watched a David Attenborough DVD on volcanoes in preparation for tomorrow’s excursion, read some more and snuggled in after a light snack for dinner.  Wil made an excuse to go to the toilet just before bed so he could sneak out in the low cloud and get lost in the foggy lights.  He came back exhilarated by such a simple excursion.   

Dice Roll

Jeff (best thing) - driving up the creek in the wake of the truck

Jen (best natural wonder) - the dark volcanic soils almost deceptively supporting such a density of rich crops on a seemingly barren eroded landscape

Wil (best taste) - lunch pasta; it was excellent and made by Mum.

Kel (best man-made thing) - the BKs. They were great to play hide and seek on our bed with.  Wil & I made pulleys and cubby houses.

2/11 MT ETNA

We woke early to a completely different day with the sun shining gently OVER THE HORIZON and the snow capped peak of Etna standing clear and proud above us. 

The Js jumped on their bikes at 0630 and made for any turn left towards the volcano.  And as usual, the bikes help us fall in love with the quiet, other side of the towns we visit.  A charming meander through an enchanting & really unusual landscape where the rich autumn reds & golds of the abundant crops are made more vibrant against the dark chocolate colours of piled up volcanic basalt.  In some places the volcanic spew looks so new, raw & bare and in others, soft mossy green & yellowy lichens have started the re-population.  Gorgeous stone farm houses & family owned wineries sit amongst curvy stone terraces framed by the ubiquitous slowly puffing Mt Etna incites in us such feelings of well-being.  Easy for us to say - I’m sure life is a lot harder than the dreamy story we put on this picture.

Back at home, we gobbled down breakfast and readied for our ascent to Etna.

Over to Wil…….  

1/11/12   Wil’s entry

It’s a clear morning. The sky is blue, and there is almost no cloud. The top of a volcano smokes, and is covered with snow. A small family stirs in the motorhome. The killer watches their window, through his telescopic sight on top of the hunting rifle.

Just joking. I’ve been reading too much Frederick Forsyth. Anyway, it was a blue sky, and, for the first time, we could actually see the top of Mount Etna (the volcano). It was covered in snow and it was smoking.  Not to worry, it always does that.  Especially when it erupts.  Back to the blog.  As soon as we woke up to the sound of Mum and Dad returning from their bike ride, Kel and I got dressed and hurried down to the pool deck area with a ping-pong ball, and played that funny game on a table with a few rows of soccer players that you spin to hit the ball into the other person’s goal. The ping-pong ball, being so light, was constantly being thrown up off the table onto the ground, so the games went very slowly but it was such fun!

Dad and Mum had showers, after which we went back to the van for our normal breakfast. Soon after we packed up and got ready to go. While Dad was packing up, Mum bought four bottles of wine (the campsite was part of a winery) and Kel and I played with the farmer’s gorgeous dog Leo. The plan was to trek up Mt Etna, for a tour in a huge four-wheel drive Mercedes-Benz truck. Mum goo-ed for 1 hour all the way up the road to the Piano Provenzana, snapping a million photos of the golden autumn colours of the carpet of pine & beech tree needles softening the curbs. 

But when we got there, and went to the Biglieteria (ticket office) we found out that it was too windy at the summit for us to take a bus. Mount Etna is 3,323 meters high. We took the cable car instead, which only took us up to 2,000 meters. 

That was so much fun. It was very tranquil, very quiet and very scenic. Ugly but beautiful. It went up above a hardened lava flow, and I could just imagine the searing heat of the liquid fire as it ploughed its way through the forests, incinerating things on its way down the hill. 

When we got off the chairlift, we were greeted by a view of a very steep hill, with the occasional shrub like spinifex grass clumps and covered in volcanic rocks. We had a small debate about whether we should take a walk or not, and Dad pointed to a little hut about a quarter of the way to the top and said that we should walk to it. An hour and a half later, we were a long way out of sight of the chairlift station.  We had scrambled up 45º rock covered slopes, stopped multiple times at the foot of some poles which Dad says the workers were about to put chairlifts on, admired all kinds of rocks and even put up with Dad wailing at the top of his lungs ‘O My Darlin’ Clementine’ which is almost unbearable.  At our chosen destination, nowhere near the top but very high up, we were able to admire traces of a lava flow that looked as though a cow had done a poo on the side of a pretty steep hill.  And we were much closer to the fuming cone puffing out such white smoke.  Everyone felt quite puffy which Dad explained was due to the altitude where there is less oxygen.

Ed, backed in to the Lava Flow

satisfied, job well done

The way down was definitely more dangerous. We leaped down, landing sideways and sending a cascade of little rocks down the hill in front of us, ran down parts and slid down in a crouch-like position as if skiing. Mum was picking her way slowly down the hill behind us in her slippery old running shoes, rubber-necking constantly at the views. Dad, Kel and I had on huge hiking boots with awesome grip. So we thumped down the hill with no care in the world. It took ages to get down reminding us of how high we climbed.

At the bottom, I was sad that it was over. We had to wait a bit for Mum to catch up to us. Dad, Kel and I wanted to get some hot drinks from the vending machine (it was really cold) but Dad only had €2.00. Shame. So, we went back to the chairlift and caught it down. We purposefully left the lid open to feel the cold air on our faces & to see clearly. We were all rugged up so we didn’t need the warmth it provided. Mum had acquired 2 massive gashes in her pants - on both cheeks from falling on the pointy lava rocks at the top.

When we got down, I with my eye for smooth surfaces, saw the car park floor & wanted to skate on it. I skated until lunch was ready. Lunch was just some cheese on crackers, etc. Afterwards I had another skate, and we packed up and drove past some lovely towns,

Castiglione di Sicilia

to a place from which we did a beautiful walk through a valley with a river in the middle. Le Gurne di Fiume Alcantara. The first part of the walk was really beautiful through orchards on small stone paths.  Dad and I had a look at one of the first hydroelectric stations (now ruins, but the water channel is still there) and poked around a few more ruins. We sat by the river, and floated leaves through the rapids. 

Norman ruins

The prettiest parts, the Gurne, oddly shaped volcanically carved lakes described in the tourist guide were inaccessible like so many parts of Italy owing to private ownership. There was a chained up homestead, possibly a seasonally closed tourist hotel sitting over the top of the best looking waterhole so we couldn’t get close to it.  Then we walked back up to the path, and kept walking along it until it met the road. The said well signed track had no further signs and the ones that were there in the first part were heavily defaced anyway. So we walked back in the direction of Ed. Dad followed the iPhone’s GPS but we ended up walking up a very narrow street, and, at the end, into a funny foresty-type area with no roads. We had to pick our way through brambles past stray barking dogs and half finished concrete pads. There were a few broken fridges discarded in it, as well as a power line draped across the branches of the olive trees growing all over the place. We bush bashed through the scrub, scratching our hands and exploring a new area going in the direction of Ed for about half an hour, before we ran into a fence we couldn’t cross because it went into someone’s back yard.

So, we went back down to the road and walked the way the GPS said to go as if we were a car. That got us safely back to Ed, all intact - nothing stolen.  Phew.  Dad saw a sign to a camper stop on the outskirts of town and so re-traced his steps to find an abandoned park by a dry river bed beneath Aussie gums. It must have been a campsite once but is no longer. We are all cosy, sitting and writing on full stomachs, about to watch a Black Adder episode.