Today was another big adventure day for our family. We left early in the morning to drive to the meeting place for our tour of Mt Etna which is the highest active volcano in Europe! It was about an hour and 45 minute drive from our villa to the gas station where we parked our rental car and met up with the tour group. We loaded into a nice van with some other passengers and our tour guide took us on the steep windy roads up Mt Etna to the Rufugio Sapienza which is on the south side of the volcano and the most popular entry point for tours.
The base of the cable car was 1,920m above sea level. I kept singing the “Funiculi Funicula” song in my head which would play during family dinners when I was growing up. It is a classic Italian song referring to funicular cable cars. We boarded the cable car and it was a fun ride with awesome views as we traveled up to 2500m.
The landscape at the top of the cable car ride felt like we were on the moon, just barren lava and ash fields for as far as the eye could see. But, our tour didn’t stop here. The next leg of our journey was a unimog ride (or “school bus” as Beckett was saying) up to 2,800m. It was a short bumpy ride to an area near the summit called Torre Del Filosofo at 2920m.
We then hiked around the summit area as a group for about 40 min. Currently, nobody can go higher than this point because of current volcanic activity. The current peak of Mt. Etna is ~3,300m. This part of the tour was challenging because Beckett was quite upset at how windy it was at the top. And Brooke was afraid that the volcano would erupt despite how many times we assured her that we were safe and it wasn’t going to erupt (foreshadowing to a later post). One of the most interesting aspects of the tour was learning about and finding all the different colored lava rocks, which have a wide array of colors depending on mineral composition. Brooke excitedly found all the shades that the guide told us about. As part of the tour we even had the chance to hike down to a crater and go inside of it.
Although it was exciting to be near the summit of an active volcano, I think we were all a bit relieved to be back in the unimog and cable car to head back down to the Refugio for a lunch break so we could get out of the wind and the kids could rest a bit and reset. Once we were back near the Refugio, a tour guide stopped our group and told us more interesting facts about the volcano and history about past eruptions. A very kind employee offered to watch the children so Jay and I could actually listen to the other tour guide for a few minutes. It was a refreshing break since Beckett would not stop moving around and playing with all the lava rocks and I missed almost everything that was said by the guides up until this point haha.
We were served a Sicilian lunch in a restaurant as part of the tour which had multiple courses. It wasn’t the best meal of the trip, but it was helpful that our tour included food and we all left re-fueled. My favorite memory was that small cannoli were brought out on trays at the end of the meal for each table to share. Brooke pointed out that the table next to us had some leftover cannoli that no one seemed to be eating. She wanted a second one but we didn’t have any left at our table. We knew that they had been sitting at the other table for quite some time and were about to be taken away by the waiter so we allowed her to go and ask the other guests if she could have it. I thought it was very brave of her to approach this international group of tourists – it proves that she’ll do just about anything for another treat haha!
We got back in the van and drove about halfway down for our last adventure of the tour which was to explore an underground lava tube. Brooke said this was her favorite part. It was short and sweet but felt adventurous to put on hard hats and navigate through the tunnel with flashlights.
Despite the devastating destruction that Mt Etna has caused to Sicilian civilizations, the Sicilian people seem to have such a deep awe and reverence for the volcano and respect it’s beauty instead of fearing it. It provides fertile soil that the island depends on and is affectionately viewed as a maternal figure.
We boarded the van and drove back to pick up our car and head back to the villa. To keep up with the adventurous theme of the day, Beckett kept screaming that he had to go the bathroom as we were stuck in traffic waiting to pay a toll. Luckily, he didn’t have an accident!
After a long day we got the kids fed, bathed, and in bed. Jay stayed back with our sleeping kids at the villa and I went out to Marza beach club for some music with Ryan, Grammy, Christina, Parker and Serafina. It was basically empty besides us but they still had a DJ playing EDM music so we got out on the dance floor for a bit of dancing by the beach.
