IT’S A BALMY August night on the Tyrrhenian Sea as the Club Med 2 plows a course toward northeastern Sicily. Passengers stylishly attired for the evening’s “dolce vita” dress theme are gathered around the bar on the aft pool deck to watch a gyrating dance routine by the ship’s young hosting staff (known in Club Med parlance as GOs, or gentils organisateur). Champagne and digestifs flow freely as the electro-pop soundtrack chases our wake across the inky waters of the Mediterranean.
Most of us only learn about Mount Etna’s eruption at the Port of Catania the next morning. The tallest and most active volcano in Europe was thought by the ancient Greeks to be home to the forges of the fire-god Hephaestus, and he’s been busy: the mountain burst into action overnight, spewing a fountain of lava from its southeast crater. Sicilians are accustomed to such tantrums. “Did you see it? The sky was glowing red,” says our unflappable local ash on your heads.” Indeed, it looks like business as usual at the Silvestri Craters visitors’ area, which sits amid a wasteland of black lava fields and extinct cinder cones some 1,400 meters below Etna’s cloud-hidden summit. The only heat here comes from a shot of Fuoco dell’Etna, a fieryred liqueur sold at the on-site gift shop.
