Mama Etna

 Leaving Siracusa we headed up the mountain. Mt Etna is Europe’s most active volcano, and given the density of the population one always has to wonder about what will happen with its eruptions.  It is nearly 11,000 ft tall and that is changing.  There are 4 main craters and the one that has historically the peak, got topped by the younger crater.  This area sits on the Eurasian and African tectonic plates and the mountain has frequent figures/cones and other areas of outlets for eruptions.   Last was just a few years ago.  It spews up to several hundred metric tons of vapor EVERY DAY.  Good news is that the lava consistency and make up is thick and slow moving (cuz of its silica content) so you don’t get the Mt St Helens type issues.  It rarely kills anyone and most people have plenty of time to get out of the way.  There was a huge eruption in the 1670’s that took something like 5 weeks to make it to Catania.  The city walls prevented it from destroying the city.  Typically in Italian a volcano is ‘male’ (gendered noun-wise) but not this one.  She is known as Mama Etna and even Catania faces her, not the sea, in how it is oriented…

All that lava makes for great growing conditions for wine and we not only visited an extinct (for now) cinder cone which had some serious wind blowing (and an earthcache) but a winery.  They served us lunch with a wine tasting which ended up causing Karen to ship a case of wine to the US.  

Then on to Taormina.