Stromboli

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Issy's arm's still very sore, so she decides to pass on today's tour to climb Stromboli. I wait anxiously for her to give me this morning's breakfast order. I've been having nightmares about trying to smuggle a bowl of cereal, a plate of bacon and eggs and four pieces of toast out of the breakfast room without anyone noticing, and these usually end with me being carted off by the police. Thankfully this morning's order is only for a couple of croissants. Despite its apparent simplicity I hear someone walking behind me as I leave, and panic. Fortunately it's just another guest.

First stop is the neighbouring island of Panarea, where we stop offshore for a quick swim before heading into the port. We pass a giant cabin cruiser with a yellow water slide running from the top deck down into the water. It's massive, and wouldn't look out of place at Sea World. I think that someone might have just a little bit too much money on their hands.

I'm the only person on the boat whose native language is English. I don't think our guide speaks any of my lingo, and I didn't think the captain did either, but as I get off the boat he says to me "mister back here two thirty".

Panarea port's very cute. All the buildings are whitewashed and it looks just like a Greek island village. I wander along the waterfront and then up some of the narrow streets behind the foreshore. There don't seem to be any normal vehicles here; they're all either very small electric cars or other miniature contraptions, and they all seem to have been designed so that they only just fit down the very narrow walled streets. This isn't good if you happen to be a pedestrian.

The Italian police are called the Carabinieri, and it looks like the local constabulary are being visited today by a very important Carabinieri member from somewhere else. He's wearing a large military style hat and his uniform's dripping with braid. If the amount of bowing and scraping going on is anything to go he must be super important. He looks like he'd be able to arrest the whole village with a wave of his hand. I'm very careful not to jaywalk.

We get back on board and stop next to some rocky islands offshore from Panarea. The rocks are all stained yellow like the ground around the vents on the rim of the crater at Vulcano, and there's sulfurous smelling gas bubbling up from the seabed. The explanation's all in Italian but I overhear a young man tell his girlfriend in English that we can't swim here because the water's boiling. I suppose I might have misheard, but decide against dipping my toes in to check just in case. I wonder what happens to any fish that manage to find their way here. There don't seem to be any floating on the surface. I guess at least if you caught one you wouldn't need to cook it.

We arrive at Stromboli and head up hill to the village where we're introduced to our climbing guide, Adriano. It seems that my runners won't be suitable for the climb and that I'll need to hire some proper hiking boots. We're also told that we all need to hire head torches. We're given blue helmets, which identify us as members of Adriano's group, which is about half Italian and half English speaking. The so-called "English speaking people" are a Dutch lady, a German speaking Italian man and his Austrian girlfriend, a Russian couple, an English couple, and me, so English clearly isn't the first language of most of them. I'm constantly amazed at the fact that just about everyone in Europe seems to speak at least two languages. I've spent long periods at various times over the journey trying to learn French, Chinese and Spanish, and I can scarcely remember two words of any of them.

We set off on the trek. We're told that the peak is 930 metres above sea level, and that it will take us about three hours to get there. The first section is moderately steep and the landscape's heavily vegetated. The sun's starting to go down, and although we're on the shady side of the mountain it's still quite hot. We pass a sign saying that you're not allowed to go any further without a guide. It then adds that the whole area's very dangerous, and that the volcano could erupt without warning at any time. They told us at Mount Vesuvius that you'd get three days warning before it erupted; I wonder if Stromboli's different. I'm halfway up now, so it's probably a bit late to be contemplating whether or not I really want to be here..

There are quite a few others groups making the trek as well, with different guides. We walk quite slowly and steadily, and we pass other groups that have stopped for a rest. Adriano doesn't seem to be into resting. I get chatting to the English couple in our group, and they ask me if I knew that I'd signed up for the "no rest group". Eventually Adriano relents, and we're allowed a short break. He tells us that we've now finished the easiest part of the climb. This is not good news. We're now above the vegetation, and all we can see above us are rocks. The path is now a series of zigzags up the steep rocky slope. It's noticeably cooler, and although everyone's still puffing hard, it's a lot less sweaty.

Adriano explains that there's a large volcanic area all around the Aeolian islands. The biggest crater in the vicinity is under the sea, and is four thousand metres high. Stromboli's last significant eruption was in 2002 and resulted in a landslide that caused an eleven metre high tsunami. It caused a lot of damage at the port, but no one was killed, mostly because it happened in winter when there were far fewer people here than there would have been in the high season.

We reach the top of the ridge, just as the sun's setting. The sunset is spectacular. Adriano tells us to put our helmets on. We can now see the first crater. Steam's coming out of it continuously, and about every twenty minutes or so it explodes, throwing magma hundreds of metres into the air. Adriano explains that all this is a result of gas bubbles in the magma expanding. It's an amazing sight. We continue up the ridge to the summit. From here we can see three vents in the crater below us, including the one we passed on the way up. One of them's glowing red continuously, and the other two explode at irregular intervals. It's now completely dark, and the explosions are an extraordinary sight. Adriano draws a line in the ash along the very edge of the crater rim and tells us that we're not allowed to cross it. I'm not at all sure why anyone would want to. The slope down to the vents is precipitous, and I don't think you'd feel very well if you fell into one of them. The views of the explosions are totally mesmerising. It's cool now, but not really all that cold.

It comes time to leave, and we're told that we'll be going down a different way. We're given dust masks to put on and told to turn on our head torches. I'm not sure we really needed to be told the latter - we're standing on the rim of the crater of an active volcano, and it's so dark now that I can't see the ground at my feet.

Adriano does a safety briefing. He does it first in Italian. This lasts for about five minutes and includes lots of hand gestures which seem to suggest that perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to fall off the side of the mountain into the sea nine hundred metres below us. The English version only goes for about one minute, and includes that we can't stop at all on the next section of the track because of the risk of getting hit by falling rocks. I can't help but wonder wonder what important safety information might have been in the four minutes of the briefing that the Italians got that we didn't.

The path down is very different to the path up. It's through soft volcanic ash which looks and feels just like black sand. There are no zigzags; it goes straight down, and it's very steep. It feels just like skiing. There's dust everywhere and it‘s very hard to see. The trick seems to be to lean backwards and try to dig your heels into the ash, and hope that you don't trip on the occasional rock. The section that we're not allowed to stop on seems to go on for a long time. Eventually the track levels off and Adriano tells us that we can now stop and empty the ash out of our shoes. I empty half the mountain out of mine, and the other half out of my socks, and I now weigh about half what I did before. We press on. We're still skiing through ash, only now the path's zigzagging through tall grass. It's dustier than ever and even more difficult to see. The trick now seems to be to make sure that you stay very close to the person in front of you, so that you can at least see them even if you can't see the ground. This must be what slalom skiing feels like, except with dust.

I remember reading the description of the tour. It said that it would take three hours to climb the mountain, but only an hour to get down. I know you'd generally expect to come down a bit quicker than to go up, but not by a factor of three. I hadn't realised that it's actually because you climb up the mountain but ski down it. I'm very glad we've done it the way we have. If you tried to climb up through the ash you'd go ten steps forward and nine steps backwards and I reckon you'd be exhausted a long time before you got anywhere near the summit. On the other hand if you tried to come down along the rocky zigzag path in the dark you'd almost certainly trip down the slope and break your neck. I'm glad somebody's thought all this through.

Back on the boat, the lights are off in the cabin, and it's very quiet. Some people fall asleep, and one of them is me.

Today has been an absolutely awesome experience that will not be quickly forgotten.

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Photos

Magma explosion, Stromboli
Impossible get a feel for the scale of this. It is hundreds of metres high.

Comments

[Superyacht charter Monaco]

Hey! Nice blog and the places you shared about is very interesting and the journey you shared is amazing. Thanks for sharing such information with us. Keep posting :)

[DaveandIssy]

Many thanks for your comment.

[Suzanne Conroy]

Glad you enjoyed it
You know Dave you can do this at Rotorua without the climb and falling rocks?????