Early on the third day we took a taxi to the Rifugio Sapienza. It was a great ride, up beyond the snowline, with our taxi driver playing Enya tapes at high volume. On the way we saw steam billowing from the summit and had high hopes of getting close to the action. From the Rifugio we got a cable car up to Montagnola, 2,500m above sea level. Four years after we were there, both the Rifugio Sapienza and the Montagnola cable car station were destroyed by lava flows. As we rolled up towards Montagnola, clouds were rolling in. They arrived about the same time as we did, obscuring the summit completely. We spoke to some guides about going up to the craters, and they said we should wait until the clouds cleared. Wait we did, but sadly in vain. We had a few strong espressos and hung around up there until about 3pm. It was still cloudy, so we headed back down and got the evening bus to Catania. In an epic downpour we descended back to sea level, and got a taxi back to Zafferana. A misunderstanding over the fare saw us arguing furiously with the taxi driver as [...]

From Zafferana a road winds up through vineyards and past houses towards the Rifugio Sapienza. The next day we set out for a good long walk along the road, refusing to be deterred by the thick clouds which descended as we hiked. If we’d have been sensible, we probably would have realised that January up a mountain is likely to mean unstable weather. We hiked up past old lava flows. In 1792 and 1992, flows had almost reached Zafferana, stopping just short both times. In 1992 the army had dropped concrete blocks from helicopters to try and divert the flows. The 1792 lava was covered in moss and almost looked like just another part of the mountain. The 1992 lava was still bare. We walked to a place with a view over eastern Sicily. The weather cleared up briefly, but only towards the coast. The mountain was still totally hidden. We walked on, but the clouds came in again and it was getting dark. By torchlight, we headed back down to Zafferana.

A photo of Mt. Etna erupting on the front page of the paper was the cue for this trip. I saw the photo in the morning, and by the afternoon I’d booked my flight to Catania, at the foot of the mountain and persuaded two friends to come with me.  We were young and naive and it’s amazing we even got to the airport given the extreme lack of planning.  We didn’t even have a guidebook, but somehow this didn’t deter us at all. Our flight was at 7am. Having slept at Heathrow to make our early check-in we were not exactly fizzing with energy on our first day. We we hardly conscious as we flew over the Alps, but I was awake and slightly nervous as we descended over Sicily.  We banked heavily and looked right down onto Etna’s summit, which was steaming gently in the bright morning sun. We walked out of tiny Catania airport to see Mt. Etna itself soaring into the sky, and took a bus that was going towards it.  We found our way to a village called Zafferana, at 800m above sea level on the eastern flank of the mountain, and booked into a [...]