A trip to Sicily is not complete without going up the slopes of Mt Etna, especially if you are a geologist!! This proved to be quite challenging – the lady in the Tourist Information Office told us that the one bus that would take us to the where the cable car began left at 8.00am form the bus station. Fair enough we thought, not too hard. However, the bus station constituted a chaotic round about / parking system with no signs, no information office, no maps and no one speaking English. We did manage to get on the right bus by following other people that looked like tourists and we made our ascent up the mountain until we got to Refugio Sapienza where the road stopped. From there, we caught a cable car which took us further up the slope. As we got higher up, the weather changed quite considerably – Catania had been quite warm and sunny but by the time we got off the cable car, there was snow on the ground and we needed jackets and beanies!! The next leg of the journey was in special 4WD buses that take you further up the slope to where you can walk around, feel the heat underfoot, smell the sulpherous gases and see quite recent lava flows. There was a lot of steam, making the visibility quite poor at times.
We had more adventure as the bad weather meant that the cable cars were out of use by the time we wanted to come down – it was snowing by then. Thus we came back down to the Refugio level in the special buses. As we decreased altitude, the snow turned into hail and heavy rain. Eventually it cleared up again and we spent some time wandering around the tourist shops and drinking coffee before catching our bus back down to Catania.
Refugio Area
Snow buses
Now you can see
Now you can't
Steam coming off the ground
No comments:
Post a Comment