{"id":1649,"date":"2012-07-03T06:39:00","date_gmt":"2012-07-03T12:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/?p=1649"},"modified":"2012-07-03T14:44:46","modified_gmt":"2012-07-03T20:44:46","slug":"up-mount-etna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/2012\/07\/03\/up-mount-etna\/","title":{"rendered":"Up Mount Etna"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Well, my 24-hour trip to Sicily went smoothly, and 24-hours later, I find myself as the only guest in a hotel at 6000 feet. This is very much the low period for hotels high up on the volcano; I guess I’m just lucky that I got a room at all.<\/p>\n

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Laura and Katherine picked me up at the Catania airport. Then we went to a place that served very yummy shaved ice you eat with a spoon and a piece of bread.<\/p>\n

After dessert, it went Laura’s place (I really needed a shower after 4 different flights) and then met some of the professors from the course. We ate in a fascinating place that has a running underground stream in its basement that dates back several hundred years to the last big eruption. There was a stream there before the eruption, and it survived the lava, though underground. And the food was good. Probably the best gnocchi I’ve ever had. <\/p>\n

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Today, I left Laura’s apartment and headed up hill, all of way up as far as road would take me: Etna Sud. I’m staying in a great place called Hotel Corsaro. I think I’m the only guest, and this place feels a little bit like The Shining.<\/p>\n

Why does this hotel rock, you may ask? Well, after being turned away for dinner at Rifugio Sapienza (“we only serve guests at our hotel at out restaurant.” – crazy bad service – I mean, what part of “rifugio” do they not understand?), the nice guy working the desk opened there closed kitchen to make me a couple of sandwiches. Awesome! <\/p>\n

I left Catania at 8 AM to start the long walk through Nicolosi and end up here, in this surreal place. I traveled through lots of tiny towns, a few forests misses by the most recent eruptions, and switchback after switchback, going higher with every step. By the afternoon, I had basically left shade behind, and it was me against the crumbling, black hill.<\/p>\n

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All of the eruptions I walked through were pretty recent, within the past couple of decades. <\/p>\n

I nearly ran out of water before I arrived at the hotel, and that would be a very bad thing, as there are no stores the past 14K or so, and it got steeper and steeper, and hotter and hotter. <\/p>\n

Anyway, I made it, and my last shot of the day is the Silvestri crater just next to my hotel.<\/p>\n

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I hope my blistered feet hold up for tomorrow’s attempt on the summit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, my 24-hour trip to Sicily went smoothly, and 24-hours later, I find myself as the only guest in a hotel at 6000 feet. This is very much the low period for hotels high up on the volcano; I guess I’m just lucky that I got a room at all. I’m getting ahead of myself, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[152,158,226],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-travel","tag-152","tag-sicily","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1649"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1668,"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1649\/revisions\/1668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.truk.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}