Day 049: My very first guiding job.. viva Etna

Bonaserra tuti,

...oggi ho fato mio primo excurzione como guida da vero,
io solo con autista del pullman i il cliente Jetair.... la storia qui sota:

Today i did my first real guiding job, with Jetair clients to Etna.
Normaly monday is my day off, but because the're no dutch + french speaking guides available today, and Evy and i booked 36 people to the Etna excursion, a solution had to be found quickly.
So i was to be the guide on the bus, for the whole day.

Sunday evening i studied all info i could get on this excursion, thanks to Margriet and Noemi, that was more than enough to "be speaking" all day. Things about vulcanology, historie of eruptions and demolished cities, fauna and flora, myths and legends, local crafts and agriculture,...
I really loved it. I guess this is something i want to do again. To contact to the customer is much closer, i have time for a chat, i can answer questions cause offcourse during the journey you stop and meet other guides from other buses who have much more knowlegde. Also the busdriver, who only speaks italian, is a true source of info. I really had a nice guy today, Franco, and we collaborated very well.

On the Etna more than half of the clients were conviced to go up with the cable car and the jeeps to 3000m, all had a great time and that really made me happy, to get all these "thanks" and "we're really happy that you conviced us to go up". The atmosphere on the bus was really like a true holiday-vibe when we got to the second part of the trip: the Alcantara Canyon. Although we lost some time on Etna cause a truck with some of our clients on board got stuck in vulcanic ashes somewhere between 2500m and 3000m, people didn't mind that we could only spent few time in the Canyon. They did understand, so i got the Franco to ask if they could take a regular public bus to do the trip again, and he kindly explained which line to take. Real team work!

That makes me think of another funny moment: At a certain point between Etna and Alcantara, i got to tel the myth of the founding of 7 villages who all start with the same name: Aci. I spoke about the myth of the young fisherman Axi, a descandent of the first Greek colonists, who fell in love with a nimpf who also had a demon as an admirer. The demon offcourse was ugly looking and made no chance to gorgeous Axi, so he used his power to turn the nimpf into a sea - the Ionian Sea. Axi was so dissapointed that he turned to the gods and convinced them to turn him into a river, so they could be together. Very romantic story, don't you think.

The real history about the 7 villages is a major destruction of the original city of Aci, somewhere during the greek-roman occupation, by a hughe earthquake followed by lave fluds who destroyed the original city. The families who had lived their, maybe didn't get allong that well, cause they decided to go live further away form eachother and founded their own new village. I had to sum all thes 7 villages and got no further than 2, so i looked at Franco, who said some more, but because it's really hard to reproduce names you never heard before, i put the mic unther his mouth so he could speak directly to the bus. People really loved it and some of them clapped their hands. You should of seen his face, he was glowing of proudness. Teamwork, it works!