Sicily - Day 5

We got up early this morning to head up Mount Etna. We picked a good day for it because yesterday it had mostly been covered in cloud.

As we drove up the views of it just got better and better.

We arrived at Rifugio Sapienza which is at the base of the cable car. There's a big car park and lots of shops and restaurants.

We paid for our ticket to go up in the cable car. They tried to sell us a guided excursion from the top but we'd already decided we'd do our own thing.

From the top of the cable car we just started walking to see how far we could get. There was lots of black lava rock and ash around. To start with we walked up the track that the 4x4 buses use.

Eventually we turned off the track and headed up towards a peak that wasn't the actual (active) summit. We passed a sign telling us we shouldn't go any further, but it seemed quite a few others were doing it so we headed on.

The last part towards the summit was very steep on soft ash. It was hard going, for every two steps up you seemed to slide one step back down.

When we got to the top it was a sort of double crater, with great views to the real summit. We could easily see into the top crater which was steaming/smoking away. We walked round the crater and over the other side to rejoin the main path.

We could see further down the volcano that the excursion buses don't go nearly as high as we had gone.

We reached bit that the map told us was lava which had been deposited in an eruption in 2015.

At that point we bumped into a guided party, and the guide told us we had come too far and couldn't go any further, and had to go back down. So we did, but only after taking in the views from the nearest point we got to the summit.

We went back down to the limit of the bus track, finding another of those signs that we shouldn't have gone past.

We walked over to climb a couple of other peaks on the way back. We started to see the first vegetation as we got lower. Surprisingly we also saw quite a few ladybirds.

The views both of to the summit and downhill were still stunning.

At one point we could walk through a crater which was still hot to the touch and had steam coming out.

Eventually we made our way back to the top of the cable car and took it back down. Once down there we had a walk round a lower crater.

Before heading back we had a drink in a bar that was lucky to still be there, a 2001 lava flow had got this far and "kissed" its back window.

As we drove back we passed loads of sweet chestnut trees, so we stopped to gather some to take home.

Later back at the apartment we made roast vegetables for dinner.