Mount Etna, Sicily

Yesterday I posted about the drive to Etna. Today, I'll tell you about Etna itself. 

Our new friends from South Korea

We went with a couple from South Korea and our driver was a great guy who loved 80s alternative music, so we drove to Mount Etna listening to REM and Simple Minds. 

Our driver

Etna is about a half million years old and it is still active. The biggest recorded eruptions occurred in 122 BC and 1669 AD.

The volcano is still very active and its latest eruption was in 2017 when magma hit the snow, exploded and injured ten people. You might've seen footage on TV because a news crew was on the mountain at the time and filmed some of the eruption.

On the day we visited the clouds had banked in the summit so we could only go halfway up the mountain (Mt. Etna's summit is almost 11,000 feet). It was very windy and cold. We brought heavy coats and hats and gloves, but it was still very cold. The average high temperature in January on Etna is 22°, which is 40 degrees colder than the temp in Catania.

All these craters on Etna used to be active vents spewing lava

The most interesting thing I learned at Mount Etna is that volcanoes have multiple vents. In fact, there are five vents on Etna that are currently having active eruptions. But, every crater you see in these pictures was an active vent at one point. That means that there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of active vents on Mt. Etna.

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