14/06/2015

 

Today Dad Mum Katie, Catrin and I were going on a tour to find out information about Mount Etna, we packed my Dads rucksack with fleeces, coats and water we packed coats and fleeces because there was snow at the top off the mountain and we thought it was going to be cold. We then put our sun cream on and we were looking for a dingy to take us to a dingy dock. When we saw the man we got on his dingy and there were his dogs called rosy and wile and we stroked them until we got to the dock. We soon got to the dock and we stepped off the dingy we had a look for a two tour guides that gave us information about Mount Etna there names were called Piero and Geovarni. We then spotted them and we stepped into the land cruiser there car and Geovarni told us that the road was made of lava because they dug and found basalt and the they got it and used it for roads that had dried up into rock, and we got told that they had lava rocks on top off three hills. We then got show some olive trees and grape trees and water melon growing from the ground, I’ve never ever ever seen a water melon growing in my life we got told that Mont Etna was famous for honey  because there are lots of flowers and they told us there is a honey shop near by and we wanted to go to it and they took us to the honey shop, and when we got there the shop was shut because it was Sunday, the tour man phoned the shop lady up and asked her to come and open her shop. While we were waiting we went to get some money out off the bank. When we got to the bank we got some money out and walked back to the honey shop. When we got there we saw that it was open so we went inside and the lady who sells the honey let us have a taste off each type. first we tried a thousand flowers and that was really nice, it was Mums favourite. then we tried chestnut then prickly pair then ucliptuse last off all strawberry honey so we brought ucliptuse honey home and a thousand flowers.

 

We then carried on and we went to a place were people prayed to stop the lava hitting the villages and once there was a really big lava flow and the villagers prayed really hard and the lava stopped right at the church they prayed at. The tour guide then showed us the hot lava grey like grassy bit on the rock that was called moss but it stayed on a rock and he told us about the black stones from the lava.

 

We then arrived at another place and we got out of the car I was exited, we were going inside a cave, we were all allowed torches and crash helmets, we put them on and we walked into a wood with pinecone trees and oak trees. Catrin picked up a pine cone for Christmas and kept it. We got to a hole and there was a rope for people to get grip. When we got to the bottom Mum still had her sun glasses on and Geovarni told Mum to take them off and she took them off. The villagers used to get snow and pat it down inside the cave and it turned into ice and they got cream from goats and if you mix them together you can make ice-cream and that's why they had lots off ice-cream in the summer. The caves were formed by a river and the lava came and made a roof.

 

We climbed back up and we walked to the car and we set off to see the craters. We then reached our destination, and we climbed up a mountain and we walked to the craters and I saw a coin at the bottom for good luck but there wasn't any lava we had a photo and we went back to the car on the way me and Dad were having a test. Dad got a stone with holes in and one with no holes and I had to tell him which one was the dense rock which they build the roads with and the holey lava flow. We then went to a really rocky place and it was like a camel ride. We were offroading in our landcruiser across one of the old lava flows. We were following the tracks made by the caterpillar bulldozers that were used to try to stem the flow of lava away from the villages. There were thousands of lava rocks coming from Mont Etna and the last large lava flow was on 2002. We saw smoke coming out of the crater and we went back to the car to go home so we got to the marina and we got out of the car and then the dingy man came to drop us off at our boat. He did that and we had tea and went to bed.

 

Written by Harry