Mount Etna

There's a harbour, itself large and untroubled by the passing winds,
but Etna rumbles nearby with fearsome avalanches,
now it spews black clouds into the sky, smoking,
with pitch-black turbulence, and glowing ashes,
and throws up balls of flame, licking the stars:
now it hurls high the rocks it vomits, and the mountain's
torn entrails, and gathers molten lava together in the air
with a roar, boiling from its lowest depths.

Virgil's (70–19 B.C.), eruption of Mount Etna in his epic Aeneid.

We began our excursion by coach that took us through some amazing landscapes scarred black by lava flow while our guide (former vulcanologist) recounted some of Etna's history. I found the 1992 eruption (here) very interesting when they borrowed US chenook helicopters to stop lava by bombing the flow with concrete blocks. more Etna here

On Etna a pit-stop for loo/drinks and help become aclimatised to the change in altitude. Fifteen minutes later we took the cable car to an altitude of 2,500 ml then another transfer this time to a ten seater "Unimog" made by Mercedes-Benz. These huge monster trucks were great, we bumped and rocked over huge clumps of rock with the ease of a bouncing ball throwing up clouds of ash and dust in our wake, which turned pink in the rack of foglights as the light grew dimmer.

Darker it was quite surreal, the sunsetting on our right in a flare of red and gold and blue while to our left another crater rose like a black road shrouded by smoke, a thin line of people walking upwards towards the moon as smoke curled in grey wisps.
I found this a bit heavy going as the sides were loose clinker and the altitude made me a little breathless (okay, I'm not as fit as I thought I was) . It was strange that once the sun went down the smoke seemed denser. We made our way down the side of the crater back to the trucks.
The return journey in the dark was fantastic, there must have been 15-16 trucks all with headlights blazing and dipping as they bounced and zig-zagged down the side of the crater. It was longer and rougher, fellow passengers giving gasps of oooh and ahh as the followiing headlights illuminated the edge of the track and the deep, deep descent.

We travelled on beyond the cablecar stop (now closed) and parked at the restaurant where we had our supper ~ 150 people in all, and a banquet of pasta, salad, beer, wine or water all for 12 Euros. A great end to the day. Meal over we climbed aboard the awaiting coaches and went back to our hotels.

Hope you enjoyed the trip, I'm away to Devon for a couple of days, so have fun and see you on Thursday, hopefully :-)
Sandy