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| Stromboli Island and cone |
One of us slept fine, off the ferry at 5.45am at Milazzo and 100m to the hydrofoil for our trip back to Stromboli. Started off at the front but it was quite an unpleasant ride so moved back where it was less jerky. After not much over an hour we docked somewhere, and on enquiring we found to our surprise it was already Stromboli and we needed to hastily disembark. The one bad thing about hydrofoils is that you have to stay inside. Also the windows are always covered in spray, and thus you can’t really see out very well.
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| A line-up of Apes and buggies |
It felt great finally arriving on Stromboli, which we have been looking forwards to for months. The peak unfortunately covered in cloud, so we couldn’t see either the top or the volcanic smoke we were looking for, however the row of fishing boats lined along the beachfront made up for it. As usual picked up by a room tout and were taken up into the town (by Ape 3-wheeler) near the church and main piazza. The town is not remotely what we had expected. We had imagined a dozen or so rooms, a few dozen ordinary houses and a few eating places. However it is a thriving tourist town, with hundreds of rooms, many bars, and at least half a dozen outfits doing guided volcano trips. Town is absolutely full of French and German trekkers in all their fancy volcano-climbing gear. Again we had imagined one trip a day would go up, if there were enough people, but it is huge business even this early in the season. So much for finding a sleepy island.
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| Strombolicchio |
We had arrived before any of the tour places opened, so waited outside one. When it opened we found that today was fully booked, though we could waitlist. This one company alone had 5 full groups of perhaps 15 going up tonight. Amazing. What it must be like in a month or so! We occupied ourselves checking out the town (actually 5 or so old towns now merged together), trying to sort out the trekking and some food, and generally getting a bit frustrated with siesta time and Italian shop hours. All day the cloud kept spilling over the peak, occasionally leaving it free, but towards late afternoon it settled in. We had the chance of hooking into another tour company, but didn’t like the look of them so much, and we had varying forecasts from people saying tomorrow’s weather would be better, or worse, or much the same. We got ourselves ready to go at 4:30pm (boots, poles, torches, extra layers, bla bla bla as required) but in the end decided to take the risk that tomorrow would be better and not worse. We heard that a guide already stationed at the top at 4pm had said the weather was terrible, though we wouldn’t be up there until around 8pm.
Anyway at 5pm we had given it away and were thoroughly enjoying crackers and cheese with a nice red wine in some comfy seats at our B&B, watching little ant-lines of people disappearing into cloud in the distance. Very, very pleasant after a somewhat trying day.
