A visit to Mount Etna!

A new Italian friend

Much of this past weekend was pretty quiet, except for Sunday. Sunday we spent the whole day with a group of Italians sledding down Mount Etna and then we headed off to Naxos, a beautiful ancient harbor, for a stroll along the water and dinner.

Here are some pictures from the trip!

The volcano!

Above the clouds!

Mount Etna was clear though still covered in snow. Catania was cloudy and gray, but up top it was bright, sunny, and warm! It reminded me of skiing in the alps - before long we were cooking!

See the volcanic landform? We sledded down that!

Etna's top is covered by volcanic rocks sticking out of the snow

 

We seven girls from MCAS got up at 6 Sunday morning and rolled onto the bus with about 40 other people - all Italians! Thankfully we found one guy who spoke a decent amount of English and some others who had a bit more English than we did Italian. Despite the language barrier, we all got along just fine!

A crater (rather large, too)

The volcanic rock where we were was porous and crumbly. In places it was quite red but over all it was grayish brown. My coat was quite heavy when I left - full of volcanic pebbles for Dad.

Doesn't this look fun!

Here and there on the road side going down the mountain I saw a house that had been taken over by lava.






The cheapest sleds available looked like squat shovels. Molded from one piece of plastic, they had a place to sit in the back and a handle in front. I plan to take the sled back home and test it out if I am there when we get some snow. The nice thing about its design was how easy it was to carry! However, many times we found out that you could slide down the volcano just fine with no sled at all.

The hill was so steep that it was almost impossible to climb once you got higher up - especially in my case because I was walking with borrowed boots a bit too large for me. The snow was icy and slick - great for sledding if you managed to get far enough up!

:Lots of people out and about!

Sledding Italian style is a bit dangerous - it is easy to get going and quite hard to stop. The preferred method seems to be to have a buddy brace himself below who physically stands in your way and stops you if you are out of control or in danger of hitting rocks or other people.We saw several collisions and many more near misses. Regardless, overall sledding was great fun.

All the girls from MCAS who went sledding, and one Italian guy!

And these two are Naxos. A few of us explored and kept to the beach while others danced the evening away at the disco.

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A closing remark: For all you skeptics out there, I successfully rode, climbed, slid, and fell all over the top of a very active volcano yet somehow made it back safely to my apartment in Ortigia to tell everyone about. 

So there - I managed not to fall into the volcano! One more Etna trip to go!