Volcano Travel · Tour
Etna Jeep Off-Road: Hornitos, the 1766 Carcarazzi Cave and Lunch at 2,000 m
A Jeep gets you across ground a car cannot, and then the walking starts on the flows themselves, looking for hornitos and lava flow caves. A hornito is a small chimney built up where gas forced its way out through the crust of a moving flow, and they only survive where nothing has disturbed them since. The route reaches a large fracture in the mountainside. Its wall is a cut through centuries of eruptions, one basalt layer on the next, and walking its perimeter is the closest thing on Etna to reading the volcano's own record. The day also stops at the 2001 eruptive vent. The ground there is still warm underfoot, the air smells of sulphur where the fumaroles are, and volcanic bombs lie where they landed. At Zafferana Etnea the route turns to the vineyards, planted on volcanic sand, with a tasting of Etna DOC white, rosé and red. Lunch is in a mountain hut at 2,000 metres, on typical Sicilian products. One condition to read before booking: all sales are final on this tour. A cancellation gets no refund, whatever notice you give.
What's included
- ETNA DOC wine tasting in the vineyard
- Air-conditioned vehicle
- Lunch in a refuge at 6,500 ft. with typical Sicilian products
- pole trekking
Itinerary
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Viale Cristoforo Colombo, Acireale
The meeting point is the McDonald's car park at the Acireale motorway exit.
Mount Etna
The path here reaches the 2001 eruptive vent, and the ground announces it before the eye does: warm underfoot, with the smell of sulphur where the fumaroles are still working. The vent is a lateral explosion crater, and its walls show the lava in layers. Decades on, it has not gone quiet. There is fumarolic activity, there are fractures in the ground, and there are volcanic bombs lying where they fell. Standing on the rim of a lateral vent is the clearest way to see how the mountain works. The magma did not come out of the summit here. It forced a new opening in the flank, and everything around the hole is the record of that.
Mount Etna
The Cave of the Carcarazzi Craters is a cavity that develops vertically rather than horizontally, inside the eruptive apparatus of the 1766 eruption of the Calcarazzi mountains. Its walls are made of welded slag, which makes them extremely unstable. Magma is still consolidating inside the eruptive fracture, but the upper part of a fracture can stay empty and reachable through the explosive or effusive vents, and that is how a cave of this kind comes to exist. Etna has a very large number of eruptive systems, and cavities like this open in only a few of them: most secondary craters end their activity plugged with their own pyroclastic material.
Valle Del Bove
The viewpoint over the Valle del Bove looks into an ancient caldera, a vast amphitheatre whose walls are layered lava, pyroclasts and ash. A caldera forms by collapse. When an eruption empties the magma chamber quickly, the top has nothing left to rest on and drops, which is what produced the depression in front of you. Lava flows and pyroclastic deposits have kept reshaping it since. The stratification is legible from the rim: each band is an episode, and the sequence is the volcanological history of Etna in the order it happened.
Zafferana Etnea
Vineyards and cellars where Etna DOC is made, with a tasting of Etna white, rosé and red.
Lunch with typical Sicilian products in a mountain hut
Lunch on typical Sicilian products, in a mountain hut.
Viale Cristoforo Colombo, Acireale
Good to know
- Specialized infant seats are available
- Not recommended for travelers with poor cardiovascular health
- Service animals allowed
- Public transportation options are available nearby
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- Infants and small children can ride in a pram or stroller
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
- Customers who have not reached the legal drinking age in Italy, i.e. 18, will not be served alcoholic beverages.
- Up to 6 travelers per booking.
- Mobile or paper ticket accepted
- Guiding available in: en, it, es.
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