Climbing Etna

Today, Etna seems to be starting a new eruption, which is not very surprising - this is the most active volcano in Europe, which is located on the east coast of Sicily, not far from Catania, but at the other end of the island from Palermo. If you drive from there along the central highway it’s 220 kilometers, if along the coast it’s a little more, but with a speed limit of 135 kilometers per hour and the amazing roads here, it’s much faster and more enjoyable than driving, say, a shorter distance from Moscow to Tula.

I was once told that the roads there seemed to be built by the mafia, I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but the quality of the surface is excellent, and if you suddenly move dangerously close to the side of the road, the car starts to whistle instead of shaking, tearing apart the suspension. There are also a huge number of tunnels, so you drive through the local mountainous terrain as if you were driving through a plain.

We climbed Etna several years ago, here is a photo report when we were filming a story about Sicily, and then its height was 3326 meters, but this is approximately, because from eruption to eruption, which happen several times a year, it changes by 10-20 meters. We were there in June, the previous eruption was in April, and the next one happened in September.

Already halfway to the top, you begin to understand what a terrible thing this is - a riot of elements beyond the control of man. Especially when you see the clearing going down along which lava flowed. It resembles a roller-rolled road made of black volcanic stone about a hundred meters wide, along the edges of which you can sometimes see the preserved halves of houses. The spectacle is impressive, and somehow I really want to believe that people managed to jump out of their houses in front of this inexorable skating rink of nature. Nevertheless, the slopes of Etna are very densely populated, but there are almost no animals; we only came across a fox, which, as we were told, usually comes out to the bus stop to feed and willingly poses for food to tourists. Such is the world of purity.

You can climb Etna on foot, by cable car and even by bicycle, which looks like complete nonsense, although there are really a lot of cyclists there. But we didn’t sweat it and chose the simplest option - by car to the ski lift on the southern slope, then by cable car to an altitude of about 2500 meters, and then by special off-road bus almost to the top and then on foot. This ascent feels like a rapid move from Mediterranean July straight into chilly Moscow November, which is very invigorating.

Of course, at the entrance to the lift you can rent a windproof jacket, but they are given even in the summer climate zone, where you don’t want to look at the winter, and when you get out of the bus almost at the top and find yourself among the snow and fog in the piercing icy wind - there there are no jackets anymore, and you clearly understand that you were very mistaken. And in addition, the bus quickly slams the doors and leaves for a point called “End of inspection”, to which it is not known how long it takes to get there. That's it, there is no way out, you need to walk in shorts and a shirt through the snowstorm along a narrow path along the crest of this fucking Etna, and to the left and right of you craters of different diameters are smoking, of which there are several hundred and who knows when and how hard they will start to erupt. And at times, fog suddenly blows in, hiding the perspective and fellow travelers, and it begins to seem to you that you are the last person on Earth, who, for some unknown reason, ended up in the devil knows where... People, ah!

Overall, this is the most memorable part of the walk. I won’t say that it’s completely extreme, but it’s definitely stronger than Goethe’s Faust. But then it’s all the more pleasant to find yourself again in a cozy Mediterranean summer and stop by to see nearby some Messina, or even better Taormina, about which back in the 60s the poet-tribune Yevtushenko wrote revealing poems that, they say, “in a quiet town, Taormina , the procession with the Madonna walked orderly" and further about the purulent ulcers of capitalism. As a result, it always seemed to me that Taormina is a dusty town from the movie “Divorce Italian Style,” where puritanical morality and secret debauchery flourish.

By the way, there are such towns in Sicily even now, in one of them I even saw a wedding, as if from the movie “The Godfather,” but for some reason the poet lied about Taormina, they probably ordered it that way. And in those years it was a beautiful and very rich city, and even more so now. But I will definitely write about this and other beauties of this beautiful island when Etna calms down again.