This week, we feature an article by guest writer Emily Ding, who traveled to Stromboli, Italy. Emily notes of Stromboli: “‘Bigger than my body,’ John Mayer sang. Indeed. It was an exhilarating feeling, like standing on top of the world. Originally written on June 12, 2006 and edited for clarity upon return.”
Our first proper glimpse of Stromboli Island – and yes, that’s volcanic gas.
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I’m currently lazing around on Stromboli island, which is one of the islands of the Aeolian group above the Sicilian mainland. My two travelmates (Jo + CH) and I, we’ve been trying to kill time the whole day, pretty unsuccessfully. We’ve been in Stromboli since yesterday and we’ve basically seen most of everything we needed to see, but because the cheapest option to Naples is a 10 pm ferry tonight (which will get us there in the morning) we have to spend a whole day here, doing just about nothing. It’s rather painstaking, to be honest. It’s such a small town that we’ve walked the same route at least three times, and seen the same people over and over, even gone to the same café twice.
I bet all of the residents are gossiping about “those three Japanese kids.” Though of course we’re not Japanese, but everyone thinks we are.
Yesterday we scaled Stromboli so we could watch its still-active volcano in action. It is one of the most active volcanoes on earth, and has been in nearly continuous eruption for some 2,000 years. Violent eruptions and lava flows, however, are less frequent in Stromboli. Its activity is usually characterized by small gas explosions that hurl incandescent blobs of lava above the crater rim, and several of these explosions occur each hour.
Its last major eruption was in January 2003, where lava flowed down Sciara del Fuoco (the Trail of Fire) towards the sea, and a volume of two million cubic metres was detached from the volcano and crashed into the sea, causing a tidal wave that damaged boats and houses. A large number of people were evacuated from the island, with apparently only about 50 people remaining, and whom, upon your arrival, are more than keen to offer you accommodation in their homes to make a living.
These 3 images were politely, and with much gratitude, snitched off decadevolcano.net
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Stromboli Island is basically a mountain (or hill, or whatever). There’s hardly any flat land—only on the perimeter but that’s a rather narrow strip. So what we did was we trekked to the summit of Stromboli so we could see the volcano, which was slightly below and away from us.
There are three trek guide companies on the island: one on the perimeter as soon as you get off the hydrofoil (but I thought they weren’t very friendly) and two others after a short uphill climb near the church. I’d recommend one of those, especially since the gear rental shop (Totem Trekking, which also has Internet access) and the place you disembark is in very close vicinity. We went with Magmatrek—they have a website here and the lady in charge is attractive and speaks very good English. I’d recommend them highly. Friendly folks. And the price is 22 euros per person—not sure how this compares with the other companies, but it should be the same.
Make sure you book in advance, though, no matter which company you go with. They tend to be fully booked in summer, because each company only takes 20 people per day. So you’ll see all 60 of you at the summit, each group in different-coloured helmets to differentiate them.
 In the far distance is the blue group, then it’s green, then it’s us, in yellow.
We’re the yellow helmets. The green helmet group is ahead of us. |
All three tour groups leave at about 5 pm, and you get back at about 10-10:30 pm. Takes about two hours to trek up, an hour sitting there on the summit watching the hissing and spitting of lava, and another two hours to trek back down. Everything can be rented from Totem Trekking for 5 euros each. Magmatrek will supply you with helmets but everything else—boots (you really do need ones with good grip), headlights, windbreakers, and backpacks—can be obtained from Totem.
And a warning: do make sure your boots fit perfectly if you’re going to rent a pair, because mine must have not, so I ended up with two angry blisters at the back of my foot about 15 minutes into the uphill trek. It was very, very painful, and hurt all the way till the next day, even though the guide had two cushiony plasters which he administered for me.
The plasters kinda made things worse, though, because my blisters were already boiling and sweltering. When I finally tore them off, a whole patch of skin came off, leaving the flesh raw and very vulnerable indeed. I’ve never had so much recourse to the four-letter word before.
It gets extremely cold at the summit, so make sure you bring enough clothes. Don’t be deceived by the sweltering weather. It gets cold up there, especially in the evening, and if you’re freezing your ass off, you’re not really going to enjoy yourself. Actually, throughout your trek, the guide will sometimes stop just to let you add on more layers or take them off, depending on when they think you need it. And just before you get to the summit, they give you time to change into long pants. It’s more comfortable to start out with shorts.
As for the experience, it could be very worth it. Most importantly, pray for a good day with good visibility. If you have that, you’ll milk your 22 euros for all it’s worth. We kinda caught Stromboli on a bad day. We were at the summit for barely a half hour and then the fog came in. For at least 15 minutes, there was zero visibility past five feet. The irony was that the most thunderous volcanic rumblings came only then, when visibility was nil, and each time you could hear a collective groan from all three groups.
I guess it’s difficult to tell when it’ll be a good day. The young guy at Totem Trekking was so sure that since it was a sunny day, it would be a good day to watch the volcanic activity—he told me so himself—but he was wrong.
Being up there on the summit, where voices sound more crisp and you’re with 59 other people with the weight of breaths-held-in-awe in the air, makes you reflective. I think I’d forgotten, until then, just how very beautiful nature can be, how very soul-lifting. In a way, seeing all that makes you feel small, but at the same time, it makes you feel bigger than you’ve ever felt, because it’s almost as if you could reach out your hand and be able to touch the sky, maybe feel some of the molten warmth of the churning sunset.
Later though, when the fog comes in, you’re back to feeling small and insignificant. The disquieting feeling of having your eyes wide open yet being blind at the same time makes you suddenly think of all the people in your life and what your life’s thus far amount to. I guess in that way, it clears your mind of everything else and makes you think really hard about your own mortality.
Sitting admist the quiet fog and the cold, I felt a sudden urge to call my parents, but it’s slumberland in Malaysia. So I thought I’d text the boys back in London, while I was here. I wanted to do it right in the moment, to convey that sense of immediacy. For some reason, CH had told me that there was tele reception at the summit and I’d thought so too, so I texted the boys, telling them how I’d never thought I’d find myself in a position like this, looking down at a volcano while it hissed and spat but at the same time held back, as if it didn’t want to give us the upper hand.
‘Wish you were here,’ I signed off. I wanted everybody to see what I saw, to have the chance to see what I saw. But of course, the texts couldn’t go through. There was no reception, and I ended up having to send retrospective messages, which I huffed about.
We sat huddled up at the summit for 15 minutes or more, still optimistic, still hoping that the fog would clear and we’d get some fireworks. But it didn’t really, although at one point it cleared marginally and then the fog returned, thicker than before. What a tease. So the guides gave us the order to move. It was time to go home. The trek down was a lot more pleasant than the trek up, I have to say. We got to use our headlights and face masks (to keep the dust from swirling into our noses)—don’t I look like I’m about to excavate the Roman ruins, or better yet, Jurassic Park?
Our guide took us down a different route from the one we came up, and the terrain was easier—very soft sand, and very deep. With every step you take, you sink calf-deep, but that’s okay because the stability gives you some reassurance that you aren’t going to fall off the side of the path. Our headlights were so tiny they were like spotlights, so you couldn’t see much aside from the other person’s feet in front of you.
Look at the different blends of terrain. Here are two team members who fell behind, for a little while.
It can get very tiring.
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There was so much to see on the trek. Yellow flowers spotting the terrain everywhere, the breathtaking sunset, the full moon on the walk back reflecting off the calm waters of our little corner of the Adriatic sea. Words are a pitiful tool of trade, at times like this. Clichés like ‘breathtaking’ or ‘mesmerizing’ don’t do Stromboli justice.
‘Magnificent’? Too dandy. ‘Beautiful’, then. I’ll stick with beautiful. Simple, classic, old-fashioned beauty.
Emily Ding is a 21-year-old Chinese-Malaysian currently pursuing her undergraduate Law degree at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). At the same time she sometimes enrolls in creative writing and photography short courses at Central Saint Martin’s College of Arts and Design. When she’s not reading clinical law papers, she’s writing, taking pictures, or dreaming of travelling.
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