8/10/10 and 9/10/10 Stromboli

Giving the islands of Italy another try, we took a cool hydrofoil boat (this thing rides up out of the water!) to the island of Stromboli. What a cool place! Whitewashed buildings, deep blue water and an almost continuously active volcano. What more could us travelling geologists ask for? The island was beautiful in the way that I always thought the Mediterranean should be (mostly the whitewashed buildings) and the volcano erupting was possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen. You are legally required to get a guide to go up to the top so we had to climb the mountain at a snails pace with about 15 others. For safety reasons, the Italian government only allows 80 people at a time on the volcano and there must have been 80 when we went. The hike took about 5 hours round trip and at the top, you go along a crater ridge that overlooks three lava “skylights” that are the source of most of the eruptions. A few hundred meters from the top, we started to hear (and feel) booms that were like a huge canon going off. Then we popped over the top and got to see the lava fountains that go with the booms. Magic if I've ever seen it. We were blown away and seriously considered hiding in the dark after our allotted hour was up so that we could stay up there all night while everyone else went back to town.

The next morning, we had booked a ferry to Sicily, leaving at 11:50am. At 9:50, the manager of our B&B came to our door and asked us when we were leaving. We said we'd be out by checkout time (11am) and then he informed us that he was asking because the ferry was leaving in 10 minutes rather than 11:50. (This is so classicly Italian. When we asked the ferry office if there might be another ferry later, their reply was “it's possible”.) Anyway, after a sweaty run to the port, we caught the -now- 10am ferry, which then proceeded to stop at apparently all the other islands in the Aolian chain. At the first port we stopped for over an hour for no apparent reason. A ride that should have taken 1 hour took 4.5 hours. I would love to know what the logic of leaving two hours early and then stopping at the next island for over an hour is but this is one of the many mysteries of Italian logic that will never be clear to me. Oh well, the islands are all beautiful and there are many worse places to spend a bit of extra time.