From the un-spoilt beaches of Taormina, Vendicari and San Vito Lo Capo, Sicily offers a unique view from the mountain tops: 5 regional nature parks.
Etna is certainly the most famous, 3300 metres high and with spectacular eruptions, from whose summit you can see the Aeolian islands and Calabria. The volcano has many interesting aspects with its vegetation typical of northern Europe and, at the top, for its black, moon-like landscape.
But Etna is a young volcano. Some Sicilian mountain ranges along the Tyrrhenian Sea, such as the nature parks of Nebrodi and the Madonie, full of small historic towns, were created by a mix of the African and Euro-Asiatic continents. Therefore mountaintops of over 2000 metres in height have been created, on which ancient forests have lasted from the ice age, over 70 thousand years ago, and where eagles make their nests and very rare animals live.
The river Alcantara, close to Taormina, is also a nature park, famous for its gorges, deep canyons of 25 metres, made out of lava stone, formed by the mixture of the hot lava of an old eruption and the cold waters of the river.
Only recently a fifth nature park was created, between Palermo and Agrigento, the park of Sicani, distinguished by its mountains full of fossils, streams and green forests, where a man can still live like a shepherd, as in times gone by, in direct contact with nature.
