NAXOS, SICILY (4/12/2007)

From: Sherman Rootberg (BiggiRoot)
Date: Apr 12, 2007 3:07 PM
Subject: Thursday, April 12, 2007

Thursday, April 12, 2007

NAXOS, SICILY

This place is about as Mediterranean as it gets. Naxos is really just a tiny port. The closest town of major interest is Taormina, Winston Churchill’s favorite vacation spot. This entire island is one major place of history after another. There is stuff right here that is 10,000 years old. But there is no dock and we have to tender in.

There is someplace nearby to dock but as usual, other ships are there. This has been far too many times that other ships have gotten better docks or docking spaces. Yesterday was a little too much to believe. There were no other ships within 500 miles yet we could not use the dock of choice. It is getting to be obvious that they are cheaping out on the docking.

Many of these crabby old farts are going to eventually figure it out and next time take the ship that gets them a dock they can use. I heard several on the bus today. At the next port, if they have to go by tender or walk a mile for transportation, they are not getting off. First Regent will loose tour dollars and then cruise dollars. Penny wise and pound foolish. They do so many things so well. It is a shame they have to screw it up by saving a few bucks in the wrong place.

The temperature was only about 60 degrees this morning but there was no wind and the sun was out. It is still smoggy here but I do not know if it is from the volcano. As no one would dock here as a first choice, we will probably never be at this port again, so we chose to see what was in this area. We took a half day trip to Mt. Etna.

Mt. Etna has snow on it from October to May. It is a ski resort in the winter. It goes up to 11,000 feet. There is one little problem with it though. It is a live volcano. It spews fire rocks and lava from the main hole in the top and sometimes from any one of over 100 other holes. For our benefit, it started up again yesterday. There is smoke pouring out and the guide said there was great fireworks last night. To bad we will not be here after dark.

In case anyone did not know or remember, Mt. Etna is the volcano that exploded in 79AD and made crispy critters out of over 2000 people before they could get away. They are still digging up body shaped holes in the lava. That was what was all that was left when even the bones were cremated.

Wait a minute. Never mind. That was a different volcano. That was the one in Pompeii. Mt. Vesuvius in Italy. This one just spits ash that covers small villages. It also runs lava but I guess not that violently. Here, on Mt. Etna the volcano is predictable enough to where there are small towns around the base of the mountain.

We started out driving along the coast on tiny narrow roads. The views and buildings were outstanding. We went to one little town after another. Absolutely gorgeous. It was like driving in a painting. We then started up a road going up and inland. It was close to an hour of winding roads and switch backs to get to the top of Mt. Etna.

We drove thorough many different kinds of terrain. There were fields planted in all kinds of stuff and then there would be lava flows where nothing grew. This too was very interesting. Finally we started nearing the top and there began to be snow all over the place. Some buildings were still buried but there was not enough snow in the lift area for skiing.

We stopped at a café near the top for a rest stop. There were many other buses from other places and none of the others were American. I thought we had some miserable old farts on our ship. I have never seen so many nasty people on a cruise. I have no idea where the others were from but they put our old crabs to shame. What a bunch of terrible pushy animals. There was a line to use the washrooms. These jerks would push the old people out of the way and just walk in front of the lines. It was mostly the women doing that and it was mostly younger people.

We drove through a couple more spots on the way back. Our guide was great and spoke very understandable English. The driver was good and he too was nice. The bus was relatively new and comfortable. This was so nice to see I would take the same tour again tomorrow.

We got back to the ship at about 1:45 this afternoon. The wind had died completely and the ocean looked like a pond of glass. At about 3:00 the volcano started really puffing out the smoke. By about 4:30 we could hardly see a thing. Everything was covered with smoke. We could not see the mountain or even shore.

The ship cruised along the coast until well after dark. The coast was all high mountains with towns at the shore all the way along. At dusk the lights from the towns started to come on. It was really something to see. We had dinner as this beautiful scenery passed by. Very romantic. Maybe I’ll get lucky tonight?