Personal Stories: Mt. Etna Volcano, Sicily
Mt. Etna Monster - story about a trip to the erupting
volcano
by Ela Ziemba
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here for more volcano photos of the Mt Enta Volcano
Europe's highest active volcano-nearly 11,000 feet tall,
Mt. Etna is located on Italy's small island of Sicily. The ancient name
'Etna' means 'burning', and August of 2001, again showed why.
We are adventure hunters and during that time we landed
at the Catania Airport, which was completely covered with ash (although
miles from the volcano). That was late evening and we could see from the
air that giant, igniting monster for the first time.
We spent the next week at a campground named Mt Etna
in Nicolosi, a tiny village about 7 miles the raging volcano. Volcanic
ash was everywhere - in our food, hair, clothes, tent, and worst of all
in our cameras.
Then we decided to get much, much closer to the crater.
We took 10 liters of water, good hiking shoes (hiking in lava terrain is
really rough), sunglasses and hats (ash protected masks are very useful,
too) and started to climb up the fierce mountain.
After 10 hours we were unbelievably close! We heard the
roar of the explosions; we saw huge rocks hurled very high and slamming
back to the earth with a thud on the cone. We spent two days and two nights
on the volcano, in awe of this unreal landscape and terrific noise. Dazzling
plumes of smoke look incredible, especially during the dark, the same as
a golden river of lava. We took some pictures under extreme conditions
(taking pictures close to the flowing lava you will feel unbearable heat).
After these 2 exiting days we had to leave, fulled with
uncommon experiences and with love relationship with the Mt Etna volcano.
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here for more volcano photos of the Mt Enta Volcano
More Volcano links & Information on the Mt. Etna Volcano
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