Ninety seconds on Mount Etna
Riding the cable car up from Rifugio Sapienza puts anyone at 2,500 metres in a morning. The craters above it are walked only with an authorised guide, so book the guided walk before you drive up.
The cable car lifts you from the refuge to the upper station, over extinct craters, with the coast spread out below. Rent boots and a windbreaker at the top station if you came up in trainers. From there, off-road buses climb the only road towards the Torre del Filosofo.
On the cable car company's standard tour, a guide then leads the group among the craters of 2002 and the recent lava flows. The mountain guides' longer walk from the refuge adds the Barbagallo craters, a lava channel and, on a clear day, the view down into the Valle del Bove.
For Etna without the altitude, stop at the Silvestri Craters on the way up. A half-hour path follows the rim of the lower crater, left by the eruption of 1892, with the summit cones above and the Ionian Sea below.
Nicolosi, and further afield
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