Bill-on-the-Hill

If you've waded through the previous days of this, you may be wondering, "So if the whole idea of this outing was to see volcanoes, why call the thread Bill versus the volcano? Seems contrary to the goal." Well, laying aside a certain movie reference, there's a reason, and today's events will begin to explain what it is.

Let me break from the way I've been writing these and put the Web Site du Jour up front: http://www.volcano.si.edu/index.cfm , web site of the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program, which tells you more than you ever wanted to know about the world's volcanoes. In particular, this descendant node -- http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0101-05= -- tells you more about the feature we visited yesterday, and this one -- http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0101-04= -- talks about our destination for today. It's all interesting stuff for the geologically inclined, and accessible yet technically rewarding. It'll also give you a bit of a read-ahead on what happened today.

This day did not start well, courtesy of an unanticipated bug (so to speak) in our accommodations. As I said yesterday, the Hotel Conti on the island of Vulcano is attractively located, staffed with courteous and attentive people, and in most regards, entirely satisfactory. However, one thing it is not is air conditioned, relying instead on sea breezes (these are, after all, the "Aeolian" Islands, and most of the other hotels here are similarly lacking in AC) for climate control. As regards temperature in the room, this isn't a problem; the aeolian breezes do indeed keep it temperate as advertised. However, they do so by way of open windows -- which afford entry to mosquitoes, and experience has shown that mosquitoes will come from miles around to dine on my wife, my sons, and to some extent, me. When night came, they descended in droves, and I think some of them were humming not just in Italian but in Swedish, Quechua, Tagalog. We were attracting mosquitoes from places that don't even have mosquitoes. And not only was our room adorned with the scrumptious bod (from a mosquito's standpoint, as well as my own) of my wife, so that they were vectoring in on her and as a result me: it was also quiet enough that the mosquitoes could be heard coming a LONG way away -- not conducive to a peaceful night's sleep if you're a light sleeper, as I am. The consequence was that I spent the whole night listening to (and supplying percussion effect for) "bzzzzzZZZZT!"<slap!> rather than sleeping, and I was a really tired puppy come sunrise. Oddly enough, Emily, who was the gourmet dining option in the room while I was just mosquito meat loaf, wasn't as bothered by the noise as I was; she's much more tolerant of noise while trying to sleep. She even managed to sleep through a fair number of the bites she suffered, and was considerably more refreshed in the morning than I, albeit covered with welts. The guys and WGMIL were in rooms off the beach and didn't have skeeter problems for some reason (despite the fact that Pete in particular is a notorious mosquito magnet), but Marco had the same problem that I did, and he looked pretty green at breakfast.

Following a boat ride around the island of Vulcano (worth doing if you have some time and can arrange it) and a dunk in the Laghetto di Fanghi (mud baths) by Emily, D and Z, we packed up and prepared to head for our objective for the next few days, the island of Stromboli , site of the famously photogenic volcano of the same name. A couple of photos on the way:

Vulcano coast Laghetto di Fanghi

So off to Stromboli via SIREMAR hydrofoil, with an intermediate transfer on Lipari, of which more later. Unfortunately, the boat from Lipari to Stromboli was significantly delayed (the only one of the several hydrofoils we took that wasn't absolutely punctual) leaving us time-crunched on arrival. This would catch up to us later...

Before getting to our events for the rest of the day, a brief digression on the Stromboli volcano. It's about 3000 feet high (above the sea) and is one of the world's most active and interesting volcanoes, having been in a state of near-constant activity through recorded history. Its typical eruptive style is a series of minor urps from the summit crater that throw lava fountains into the air every few minutes; these are its main attraction (see fantastic photos at yesterday's Web Site du Jour), can be viewed in near-complete safety from a point on the crater rim, and are the main selling point for the Volcano Discovery package that we were on. However, there is no such thing as a "predictable" volcano. Every few years Stromboli breaks from its routine for a while, doing something else to relieve its internal pressures. This usually takes the form of a stronger (though still mild by world volcanic standards) explosive event that can briefly shell distant parts of the island with bits of debris, accompanied by lava flows in the Sciara del Fuoco, a valley/collapse feature on the north side of the island, fortuitously away from the island's two towns. When this happens, the "magma column" that produces the summit lava fountains "drains" down to a lower level of the mountain, and summit fire fountaining cannot be observed. Furthermore, as the volcano "reloads" and the magma column builds back up to the summit crater over a period of months, such summit-crater activity as does occur tends to be somewhat more violent and unpredictable than usual, and viewing from the crater rim becomes unsafe and is prohibited.

Unfortunately, this was exactly the situation when we reached Stromboli. A few weeks earlier there had indeed been an explosive event and lava flow, and the magma column hadn't risen back to the crater yet. The crater viewpoint was therefore closed, and we weren't going to be able to go higher than the 400-meter level, the highest that one is allowed to go when the volcano is in this less predictable, more violent state. Even going to that intermediate level requires a guide when the volcano is misbehaving (any visitor can normally ascend to this level, although summit-crater trips always need an official guide). This caused a significant glitch in our itinerary. Normally, when Volcano Discovery does a Stromboli expedition, the first thing done on arrival is a free-form trip by the party members to a lower viewpoint; then on the second day, the party would join a guided group led by one of the island's approved guide outfits and make the strenuous trek to the rim for some all-day eruption viewing. This time, that summit climb was out, and so we were going to have to do some improvising.

The approach that Marco chose was to accelerate the schedule somewhat, which would result in a free day later in our stay; more of that later. On this day, however, we were to hike to the 400-meter viewing position, in the company of our official guides, from MagmaTrek ( http://www.magmatrek.it -- includes English-language pages). This would have been just fine if we'd been on schedule, but the delayed arrival of the SIREMAR hydrofoil meant that we really had to hustle to get up and down before dark. This was painful for me; I'm rather out of shape anyway, was well below normal strength owing to the mosquito-plagued night, and was also having trouble with a knee, as the trail to the 400-meter platform is rather poorly laid out and has sections built in a way to aggravate knee problems, which I'd already had. Eventually I did struggle to the platform (everyone else having moved quite a bit more rapidly) and we took in the view, consisting of occasional puffs of volcanic ash from the crater accompanied by rockslides in the Sciara del Fuoco. The photos from here aren't nearly as spectacular as what you can see from the summit, but here's a sampling, such as they are:

Stromboli puff Sciara del Fuoco

So this is why the titles: we seem to have an ability to shut off interesting stuff in volcanoes. We'd suspected this capability as far back as our honeymoon, when we visited the Big Island of Hawaii during one of the few periods in the last 30 years when Kilauea volcano wasn't active. As events would show, we had a similarly soporific effect on Mount Etna. Wonder if we should consider renting ourselves out to landowners or something?...

After lots of picture-taking, we hobbled down to a pizzeria for dinner and more scenery, then back to our hotel (the excellent Villaggio, http://www.villaggiostromboli.it/) that would be our base of operations for the next several nights. We'll pick up the story there in the morning...