So I move out of my flat on the 23rd, after an emotional goodbye to marco, a very good friend that I enjoyed knowing a lot, he was like a brother to me. I brought all my things to tomimmas because I could not move into my new house yet and then left hers and went to Muhterems to get up and go to sicily at 3am.
We left for the airport, and when arriving with an hour to get through security to our gate, we were confronted by the biggest queue of people ever, there must have been 1000 waiting to get through. Luckily, this moved quite quickly, tho we had something like 15 mins to get to the gate. I had my perfume, conditioner, hair oil and suncream taken from me tho because the bottles were too big! So we board the plane, sit for 30 mins, I actually fallen asleep. Then the pilot tells us we must get off because they have technical problems. We wait 5 hours for our next flight. Tho we were fed and we also will be reimbursed for the flight. We arrive in Palermo, drop our stuff and go to the beach. The following day we wonder around the city, the heat is intense and we stay in the shade a lot. At this point, I did not feel like touring another city, as so far I have now been to
Sienna, Florence, Naples, Rimini, Ravenna, Venice, Palermo, Catania, Rome and Padova. I want to see the countryside now.
The following day we head to a natural reserve, hiking along the cliff edges with our backpacks, beautiful view of the ocean. We arrive and although we’re not supposed to, we pitch tents at the beach, get into our sleeping bags and lay by a fire, the stars spilled across the sky like salt on a black table. The following day we wake up at 7am, are sunbathing on the beach at 8, we have a stretch of one of the worlds most beautiful coastlines to ourselves. We hike back and start an intensive journey to Palermo, after swimming, sunbathing and generally luxuriating in the heat. Travelling back was hard because we got trains and buses rather than a taxi, and it taken us about 5 hours, and several times almost missed our trains.
The following day we got up and got the train at 7am to go to Catania, the other side of sicily. I slept on the way there, but the others said it was beautiful, so on our way back to Palermo I stayed awake to watch. We travelled around Catania for the day and then thought about where to camp.
The plan was to get a bus up mount etna early in the morning the following day, but it suddenly occured to me that it would cost us just as much to get this bus to the refuge point as it would to go there tonight by taxi and just camp up the volcano. 1000 meters above sea level. This way we can hike it properly not just get a cable car up. So we arrive, at 11pm, its freeeeeezing up there and we have to find somewhere to camp. We walk around a bit and theres a load of wild dogs howling, and we come across a spot to camp that is flat, but literally on the side of a crater. As we walked along we could hear the sounds of the little explosions happening underneath our feet. We pitched the tents, really scared but very excited. We started seeings lots of police cars driving around with their blue lights on, like they were searching for someone. They came past us a few times, for all we knew it could have been for a missing person. Anyway, it was a strange, strange night.
In the morning, we got up, went to the hotel for a coffee and started our ascension. We’re carrying our 10k backpacks, not properly equipped and there isn’t even a proper path. Its literally just scaling up the steep sides of a mountain of powdery dust. Every step you take up, you slide back 5 inches, and its so steep at points you have to crawl. You fall a lot as well because of this, though luckily there is a lot of space between you and any sheer drops, unlike mountains. I cried when we reached the second refuge point, 500m from the top, because I felt so overwhelmed by the sheer strength it taken, it was the physically the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life and I was also very frightened, by the intensity of climbing europe’s biggest, most active volcano. We reached the top and there was steam coming from the crevices, and ice, and then just a thick cloud engulfing us and the mountain, and all the landscape was firey black, a very surreal view, like being on mars. We climbed down, got the couch back to Catania and slept (on one of the french boys shoulders!!!!!)
We went to find a beach to camp on, with bottles of lovely sicilian wine, we lay by the ocean, again under the stars, discussing astrology and philosophy. It was wonderful. The following day, Robin said he could see a small eruption from the mountain that happens occasionally. We went to Palermo, spent some of the day there with one of our friends, a sicilian named Matteo who shown us around the city. Muhterem known him from another exchange when she was younger. We went to the beach again. Then we went and slept at the airport before our flight home.
So i’ve been back in Bologna 5 days, went to Ravenna to go to the beach because I’m not ready for life without beaches again yet, and moved into a house with 8 italians, they are crazy!! We have a little kitten and theres a dog too, and a garden and it must be 10 minutes from uni. Like I go very much at all anyway. Tomorrow I’m back to fashion. And I’m applying for internships in Paris to take a gap year in between second and third year, I’m not ready for this part of the adventure to end.
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