Mt. Etna erupted a few weeks ago, and it was one of the most fantastic things I've ever seen. Naturally, we had to get as close to the lava as possible, so we drove with our friend Lenny about 20 minutes up the south side of Etna from our apartment and parked the car. Then, we hiked up from there, on what we thought was going to be about a 25-minute hike, but an hour later, as we climbed over dunes of volcanic ash and the "trail" disappeared, we realized we were wrong. In any case, after about 75 minutes of straight uphill climb, we were about as close as we were going to get without getting covered in spores from Etna's prickly bushes growing in the rock. We found some Italian picnickers (because, again, naturally, the thing to do when a volcano erupts is to have a picnic on it) and sat down beside them to enjoy a bottle of one of our favorite Sicilian wines that we'd brought along for the occasion, Planeta Segreta. It's a Nero D'Avola/Syrah blend that goes down easy, especially at high altitudes.
These pics aren't great, but it's the best we could do at 1am at 12,000 ft.
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