Sat 29 Sep – A walk up a volcano

Our plan on Sunday was to hike up the volcano and visit the “Gran Cratere”. We were still at anchor on the west side of the northern part of the island, but now the wind and waves were rolling in so at 10:00 we motored a short distance around to the eastern side, which would be more protected and closer to the town where the path to the volcano started.

There are a couple of remarkable things about this anchorage. The first being the relatively narrow “shelf” which runs along the edges of the bay as it’s only here where it’s shallow and safe enough to anchor. As you come in the depths go rapidly from well over 200m to just 8m so you need to make sure you’re well situated on a shallow patch to avoid your anchor and chain accidentally slipping off over the edge. Although we had 15 knots of wind the anchorage was empty so we picked a prime spot, dropped 40m of chain and properly dug the Spade in. We’d be fine here.

The second remarkable thing was the putrid rotten egg smell emanating from the smoking yellow sulphury rocks which surround the bay. It’s utterly revolting at first, but you quickly get used to it. It’s doing a nice job of covering up the smell of our holding tank. 😉

This time, with our belongings in a wateproof bag we rowed ashore, left Bob on the beach and walked up the road to where the volcano trail started. By now it was around lunchtime so we were pretty much on our own as we started our ascent, which according to the map was 1,000m up along a a trail about 4km long.

The route to roughly the middle of the hill was laid out in a long zig-zag along a gravel path strewn with rocks. It was pretty steep in some places and I was already started to worry a bit about coming back down! About half way up the rock changed into a fine light sand and was a little easier to traverse. After about an hour we were almost at the top, and intrigued as to what we’d find when we peered over the edge.

The crater was huge, measuring about 500m in diameter and was utterly memorising! It was like being on the moon. The last eruption happened in 1890, but along one side there’s still a long line of luminous green fumaroles that eject steam. We wondered about getting down into the crater itself but we’d read it’s highly inadvisable because the concentration of gas which accumulates in the depression makes it almost impossible to breath. No thank you!

We walked clockwise around the crater. The path took us first across the very hot and smelly bright green smoking rocks, along a steep zig-zaggy path to the highest point, along the far ridge then back down to where we’d started. It was a clear day and the views of the other Aeolian Islands were stunning, and from the top we could see Bini who was thankfully still where we’d left her.

We made the trip back down and stopped off for lunch in the village before heading to the supermarket for some groceries. Just opposite was a chandler, who had a big CampingGaz sticker on the door. Given our failure so far to convince any chandler to swap our Spanish gas bottles for “real” CampingGaz we were not feeling hopeful but went in to ask anyway. The guy didn’t give us an outright “no” but said he needed to see them before deciding. We rowed back to the boat, collected the bottles and went back to the shop.

Antiono (the shop owner) gave the bottles a very thorough once-over whilst (in broken English) explaining something which neither Tom nor I could quite understand. Politely nodding along were both just listening out for either a yes, or a no. He was mostly talking to Tom at this stage so I was eyeing up what else he had in store, and my gaze came to a halt at an enormous glass decanter of what looked like wine on the counter top. Antonio noticed and obviously far more interested in chatting about wine than gas, he put the gas canister down and gave us the story about where this wonderful vino had come from. Grapes grown on the side of the volcano apparently! Then out came the glasses (which were formally Nutella jars given the logos) and next thing we knew we were drinking wine with him, plus one of his buddies who’d timed his visit to the store with perfection. Still none the wiser as to whether he’d exchange the gas we decided just to enjoy the moment. After downing the rest like a mug of cold tea Antonio disappeared and came back carrying three brand new CampingGaz bottles! Tom and I gave each other a look of utter delight, paid Antonio and went skipping back to the boat with our winnings. Woo hoo!