Sorry for the one-day lapse. Here is the blog for Sept 16th.
Today we finally climbed the volcano.
The day had a late start - the tour we signed up for didn't leave the dock until noon, so we ran some errands earlier in the morning. We met everyone from our tour (and it turns out several other tours) at the boat and started on our way. The first stop was at the island of Panarea where we got a tour of a small bay called Cala Junco. The boat sailed around the bay and anchored, giving everyone a chance to go swimming. It was great to be able to jump off a boat and get right in the water without negotiating the pebbly beaches. There were many people on watch for jellyfish, yelling and pointing in Italian, English, French, Dutch, and German.
After a quick dip, the boat continued to the main town on Panarea, San Pietro. Here we had an hour to explore but ended up spending 30 minutes in line to get some panini for lunch. We got the last two rolls that the deli had...we didn't realize how lucky we were until later - there was no other place to grab dinner before climbing the volcano, so the sandwiches were really the only food we had with us. We did have a little time to visit the port town, but it seems that Panarea is a pretty ritzy destination with a lot of fancy hotels and not much else to see.
Back on the boat, the tour took us through the some of the small islands off of Panarea (it has its own archipelago). The small islands had great shapes, and there was even one that has volcanic activity under the water , so the water is constantly bubbling at the surface. Then the boat made the long haul to Stromboli. Stromboli is basically a live volcano that is an island. There are no roads across the island, so some towns are only accessible by boat, and the main town of Stromboli doesn't have a proper electricity grid, so there are no streetlights (everything is powered off of massive generators).
Once the boat docked, everyone on board separated into two groups - those who were climbing the volcano, and those who were not. Our (much smaller) group head over to meet our guide who quickly laid out the plan, gave us our helmets (mandatory over 800 meters), and we all walked over to the main piazza in town where we could pick up any other gear we needed a local rental shop. Finally, at around 4:30 PM, we started our ascent. The guide did a great job at setting a reasonable pace, and therefore the climb was not too bad. It was all uphill, and some places were pretty rocky, but not the most challenging hike we've ever done. However, it was like being on another planet. Once we were above the trees, it was just a crazy landscape of volcanic rock and sand, and just a sheer slope straight down to the water. The whole time I was getting more and more nervous about the descent. Which is in the dark...
We finally got to the 800 meter mark about three hours later, where it was a lot colder and windier. We changed into our pants, sweatshirts, jackets, and helmets, and I was still freezing. Everyone ate their dinners and we waited for the sun to set. Then we hiked a bit farther up to get a better view of the volcanic explosions. At this point, it started to smell very strongly of sulphur, and the guide distributed face masks to everyone.
Then we started to see the explosions - the first couple were huge clouds of ash - we would watch them, and then we all had to turn around to avoid having the ash blow right into our eyes. The volcano was smoking a lot, so it was very difficult to see anything, but when the wind was right, we saw the red lava below us. Once, we saw the shower of incandescent lava spew out of the crater (sorry, we didn't get any pictures), and it was just out of this world to see it in real life. Once we were up there for about 40 minutes, the guide told us it was time to start the descent. At this point it was completely dark out, so we all turned on our headlamps and started walking.
Turns out, the way down is not the same path we took on the way up (thank god!). Instead, we walked down what was basically a huge sand dune - as far as I could tell. Every step we took we slid down another two feet. It was like this practically the whole way down, and it turned out to be pretty fun but killer on the tuchus. The sky was so clear that the views of the stars were amazing (when you had a chance to look up). It was also great to look up the volcano and see all the little trails of lights of other tour groups making their descents. 90 minutes later we were back in town and head back to the boat, which took us back to Lipari. We arrived around 11:30 PM, which is why this blog is one day late!
Here is a video of one of the smoke explosions (not quick enough to catch the lava spewing):
Gelato Guisti per il Giorno:
None. Turns out there is no gelateria at the top of Stromboli...
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