Up the Etna: Chris Raven drives up Mt Etna in a £130 Rover
May 8, 2011 by admin
Filed under Writing by Chris Raven
The Raven brothers head for Sicily, Italy, and attempt to drive their £130 Rover up Mt Etna, one of the most active volcanoes in the world.
The Rover 214 having a rest as it climbs Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy. Photo © Chris Raven
Chris Raven
By Chris Raven
ONCE AGAIN, I have returned home from a little road trip adventure with my bushy-haired brother, Simon. This time it was Europe, the Mediterranean, and the flamboyant country of Italy; famous for the anise-flavoured ‘blow-your-eyeballs-out-of-your-face’ Sambuca, the Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati and the Fiat, the Roman Empire, the Vatican (Pope), Pasta, Pizza, Spaghetti, the Mafia, the sinking city of Venice, trendy fashion designers, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, Sicily, the beautiful Dolomites, Mt Vesuvius and Pompeii, Mt Etna (Muncibeddu in Sicilian), da Vinci and Michelangelo, Pavarotti (god bless his soul), delicious coffee, fine wine, world class cuisine, aftershave drenched, well-groomed men who tie colourful jumpers around their necks, sexy women (Elisabetta Canalis), footballers (Roberto Baggio), the horny Prime Minister and entrepreneur Berlusconi (The Knight) and basically a country famous for fiery people who wave their hands in the air alot and drive really, really fast.
Our mission: to drive up Mount Etna to Refugio Sapienza, elevation 6,500 feet. Distance: UK-Sicily: 1908.95 km. Our vehicle: Rover 214 GSi, silver, bought for £150 in cash (£130 to be precise – it came with £20 worth of petrol in the tank). Assembled at the Longbridge car plant in Birmingham, Midlands, in the year the Iraqi forces invaded and conquered Kuwait – Margaret Thatcher, the iron lady, resigned as UK Prime Minister – the movie Dances with Wolves with Kevin Costner was a big hit and ‘I Wish It Would Rain Down’ by Phil Collins was blaring out of every Pioneer LP turntable/record player music station around the world. Yep, the car was born in the year 1990.
OK, so it was a rather old, almost classic, motor with fake wooden upholstery and a well thought out coin tray for your loose change, genius idea. The seats were comfy, music came out of the radio, it had an electric sunroof, electric windows, the brakes worked, which was important, the engine looked like a proper engine and all of the four wheels rolled. What more did we need? The fact that the steering wheel shook quite dramatically whenever the speed dial peaked 60mph, and the Rover swerved severely to the left due to the tracking, but, at the end of the day, they were all very minor technical hitches that could be easily ironed out, because nothing was going to stop us from driving up Mt Etna, the highest volcano in Europe (10,922 ft) and one of the most active volcanoes in the world. No other country in Europe has as many volcanoes as Italy, so, let’s not forget the other two, Stromboli and Vesuvius, which are equally as active. Maybe we were both being a couple of unrealistic jokers with this Laissez-Faire attitude. I mean, Mount Etna had already blown its top five months before and In 2002–2003, a much larger eruption threw up a huge column of ash that could easily be seen from space and fell as far away as Libya, 600 km south across the Mediterranean Sea. To the ancient Greeks, Mt Etna was the realm of Vulcan, god of fire, and the home of the one-eyed monster known as the Cyclops, to us, it was nothing more than a big beautiful smoking lump of rock, a challenge, and a great way to blow your gasket and burn your brakes…we were driving a banger!
Chris Raven looking rather excited before catching the ferry to Sicily, Italy. Photo © Simon Raven
Anyway, we zipped through the protest-free streets of Reggio de Calabria, a town on the boot of Italy, home to the ‘Ndrangheta criminal organization, who make money from drug trafficking, extortion and money laundering activities, and skidded into the docks just in the nick of time to catch the last ferry to Messina on the north east side of the island of Sicily. The small car ferry was practically empty, I counted more staff than passengers, and the journey only took about an hour. It was not far off 6:30pm and the sun was hugging the horizon, painting flames, as our ferry cut smoothly through the swell of the waves. Boats bound for Malta were silhouetted in the distance and to our right we saw Mt Etna and a trail of smoke coming out of the crater that was streaking across the orange sky. It was going to be fun.
Early the following morning, after spending the night in a service station on the E45 outside of the city of Messina and, with our stomachs full of cheap tins of fish, bread and coffee, we were back on the road and heading south along the coast towards the Mt Etna National Park. I still couldn’t believe our £130 Rover had made it all the way to Sicily. Driving at 55mph for 2,000kms had certainly paid off despite the unnecessary abuse from the 18-wheeler Artic lorry drivers, who seemed to think it was funny filling our wing mirror with their bloody front grill; so to speak.
Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy. Photo © Chris Raven
Skidding onto the SS114 coastal road, we passed through the charming, historic, hillside town of Taromina (Sicily’s Monte Carlo) and one of the island’s main tourist resorts. Luckily for us, most of the package tourist and posh people had gone home, so the town was relatively quiet. Whacking the Rover down a side street, we grabbed our cameras, rolled on some deodorant and wandered up and down the main street, Corso Umberto I, admiring the architecture, the Torre dell’Orogio clock tower, the souvenir shops, the ice cream parlours and two pretty chickadees sweeping the pavement outside a trendy clothes shop. A movie or Italian advert was being filmed in a delightful, sun-kissed plaza, so, not wanting to cause thousands of pounds worth of damage, we carefully tip-toed passed and tried not to trip over any of the equipment. Hungry to reach the volcano and, to be honest, a little jealous that we weren’t staying in one of the sweet-smelling boutique hotels and eating swordfish that night, we raced back to the comfy Rover and nudged our way onto the SS114 coastal road with its dramatic ocean views.
Buying a bag of huge juicy peaches from the roadside (the best I have ever tasted), we weaved through the delightful seaside resort town of Giardini Naxos with sticky fingers, and continued to thunder south along the SS114 for 6 km, before entering the town of Fiumefreddo di Sicilia where we turned right down via Regina del Clelo and onto the SS120, a small winding road, where we zig-zapped through green countryside with citrus groves, orchards of lemons and figs, vineyards, farms, cattle, forests and little towns, and moved closer to the looming Mt Etna volcano.
The barren landscape from Mt Etna, Sicily, Italy. Photo © Simon Raven
We reached Linguaglossa, a pretty town, with its rich production of wine grapes, walnuts, almonds, chestnuts and cattle breeding, which sits in the shadow of the volcano and on a large tongue of lava, and then turned south for Zafferani. It puzzled me how the hell the people living in these towns and villages could relax knowing a very large time bomb is on the other side of their garden fence, which seems to enjoy puking out lava and smoke quite frequently. I mean, is it on their mind when they’re rushing to get ready for work or about to make love? If I lived underneath one of the world’s most active volcanoes I’d think about moving (although, not sure how you’d sell your property). Here’s what an ad in the local paper might look like ‘Lovely 4 bedroom house with garage and large garden…and, uh, a big active volcano in spitting distance that might erupt and possibly turn you to ash.’ Maybe, this menacing volcano isn’t really a threat, and Etna isn’t a real danger to peoples’ lives. You would think the evacuation warnings are pretty good.
After a quick gas stove meal, consisting of pasta and tinned fish with a slice of cheese and shit loads of tomato sauce, we arrived at the Mt Etna National Park. We pulled over and looked at the small road leading up into the dark clouds. It was a hot day, but the weather wasn’t looking good. What was the worse that could happen I thought to myself? Ok, so we were driving an old Rover with dodgy tracking and we had absolutely no survival equipment, and zero knowledge of volcanoes. But so what? People have crossed deserts without the knowledge of, uh, sand. Or crossed oceans without the knowledge of water, and there we were contemplating if we should drive up a silly volcano. Suddenly, a convoy of RV’s zoomed passed followed by a small fiat with a pensioner sat hunched behind the wheel. I turned to Simon and said “Fuck it, let’s drive. If they can do it so can we!” So we did.
Simon Raven at the top near to Refugio Sapienza. Photo © Chris Raven
Higher and higher we went. The landscape was amazing with patches of green forest growing around the barren black volcanic stone, called ‘sciara’. The Rover was running smoothly, the brakes were working just fine and the engine was purring like an old lioness. We were over 3,000 metres in altitude when the cigarette lighter suddenly exploded giving us both a fright. But this little test didn’t distract us from what we had come here to do; the challenge we had set out to achieve and the adventurous story for us to tell our grandchildren in front of the fire in the years’ to come. We felt like soldiers hurtling towards the Taliban; knights in shining armour brandishing sharp swords and charging towards the battlefield, the Rover our sturdy stallion. Nothing was going to stop us from reaching our goal…nothing! I slammed my foot down on the pedal and we raced to the finish line. Well, when I say raced, I mean, we went a little faster.
A wild fox ran across the road, it looked at us with its dark, evil eyes, and then a pack of wild dogs, practically wolves, soon appeared. We motored on. The landscape was now totally barren black rock at elevation 6,500 feet. What will be at the top; smoking craters, lava pouring out, a snap shot from 230 million years ago during the Triassic period? Our mission was soon complete. I was shaking. My heart was thumping. We followed the road around a bend, but sadly our illusions of being surrounded by spewing lava and dinosaurs were suddenly trashed when we were presented with a really big car park full of cars, RV’s, and tour coaches. There was even a restaurant, souvenir shops and a bloody hotel. Crowds of tourists walked by our car, filtering into the many tourist facilities. I couldn’t believe it. We had risked our lives (well, not quite) to drive up a smoking volcano and we get to the top and there was practically a theme park waiting for us. I won’t say I was a little disappointed when I reached Refugio Sapienza, and I’m not one for moaning, but I wasn’t expecting it to be such a tourist attraction. They may as well of built a great big roller coaster and a McDonald’s up there too. We parked the car, paid for a ticket, joined a really long queue and grabbed a coffee.
The clouds were low and rain was soon to arrive. It was pointless jumping in the cable car or paying for a 4×4 jeep ride to the crater another 1,000 meters up. So, after munching on a Kit Kat and a packet of crisps, we admired the misty landscape from high up on Mt Etna before jumping in our Rover and driving back down to the ocean to the smell of our burning brakes, which nearly caught fire.
It was a wonderful road trip to Sicily, but there was more to come. From volcanoes and Catacombs in Palermo to ancient Greek ruins, we were going to see it all. We had the whole of the Mediterranean to explore and, while we waited for the brakes to stop smoking, I flicked open the road map and pointed to Seville in Spain. When you are on a road trip you have the freedom to go where ever you want to go, and we like that.
Happy travels…
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