The photo above was an expensive proposition.
It was taken at the top of Mt. Etna. Or Aetna. (Your choice.) One of the largest active volcanos in the Mediterranean, it’s located on the island of Sicily, off the coast of Italy.
Home of Vito Corleone.
Our visit to Taormina on the coast of Sicily was marred by the first really bad weather day of the cruise. I had pre-arranged the excursion to the top of Mt. Etna months ago. At two miles above sea level, I had envisioned panoramic views of the entire “boot” of Italy.
To complicate matters, Taormina doesn’t have berths for visiting cruise ships. We were required to use tenders (re-purposed lifeboats) to get passengers (and crew) to shore. Given the heavy winds, the waters in the harbor were choppy at best. During the 15-minute ride to shore, almost all of the passengers were able to keep down their Cheerios.
About two dozen of us, clad in ponchos and raincoats, crawled out of the tender and found the coach that carried us to the top of the volcano. An hour-long adventure in itself, the bus traversed the mountain on a narrow road, negotiating a few dozen hair-raising hairpin curves with no guard rails.
At the top, we stepped out of the coach and into a cloud. A rain cloud.
We managed our way up the side of the last active crater, an event from over 20 years ago, and peered down the lava field. While I didn’t get the panoramic views I had hoped for, I got this one shot before my lenses was covered with rain droplets.
Whipped by high winds and biting-cold rain, my fellow saturated adventurers high-tailed it for the shelter of the bus. The doors closed behind us and we headed back down the volcano, squeezed onto the tender and poured back onto the ship in time for a late lunch.
The photo above was an expensive proposition. But obviously an adventure worth writing about…and worth every penny.