Bill-on-the-Hill

Well, if you can't climb the mountain, circumnavigate it. That was the plan for today, and it produced a considerably more laid-back day that included the kind of feast that most tourists come to Italy for -- most who are a little more sane than we are, anyway. But what's a cactus plantation doing there?...

As I said yesterday, the standard Volcano Discovery Etna/Stromboli itinerary is based on the assumption that you'll conduct low-elevation reconnaissance on your first day on Stromboli, then climb the thing on the second day (and get awesome views into the crater, of course), with later events TBD. Alas, the abnormal state of the eruptive activity didn't allow the climb, as already explained, so we were in a position of needing to improvise already during our second day, and first full day, on the island. Marco's solution was to move the events normally planned for the third day up, reasoning that we'd find something to do on the third day, as indeed we did. Accordingly, the actual plan for this day was to take a boat ride around the island of Stromboli, stopping at the tiny village of Ginostra for lunch and getting a bit of swimming/diving in on the way back to Stromboli village. And so we did.

When you get off the hydrofoil at Stromboli village, you'll be met by a swarm of outfits offering boat trips, helicopter trips, whatever. The entire economy of the place is based on tourism (with a twist that I'll get back to). An advantage of using an outfit like Volcano Discovery is that they know who can actually deliver the services they're touting, and arrange the services you want rather than you having to take pot luck. So here; Marco had already made arrangements with a small boat operator for our trip, and we didn't have to run the gauntlet of the touts.

This produced a nice, relaxing day of more sedentary sightseeing than what we'd been doing, or would do later on Etna. The island of Stromboli is a bit smaller than Vulcano, and it doesn't take long to circumnavigate it. However, a worthwhile stop is the village of Ginostra, on the opposite side of the island from Stromboli village and not connected to it by any road, although a trail between the two is under construction. Ginostra is really small, with infrastructure to match. On Vulcano, one could get around via cars on single-lane roads, if there was any reason to (it's small enough that you can comfortably walk just about everywhere from the dock). In Stromboli village, the paths are so narrow that the motorized transportation is limited to golf carts and similar contraptions. But in Ginostra, here's what meets you to offer "transportation" from the harbor (which btw is billed as Europe's smallest):

Ginostra donkey

Well, actually, this beast just transports your luggage if you're staying in town, not you, but you get the idea. Ginostra can be reasonably described as "bucolic." Even basic utilities were in short supply into the 1990s. None of this, however, kept us from having a really sensational lunch while we were there, at the Trattoria Incontro (thanks to Marco for supplying this name, as it wasn't conspicuous). Our party (which included a German family as well as the eight of us, plus the couple that crewed the boat) must have consumed about half the wine in Ginostra...

After the meal and a brief nap, it was back to volcano tourism. Marco wanted us to see some of the damage done the last time the volcano had had a significant explosive event, which was in 2003. So off we went to a huge field of prickly-pear cactus above Ginostra -- wait a minute, a field of what?? Cactus aren't native to Stromboli, or Europe at all for that matter. Well, it turns out that they were introduced here, and elsewhere in the Aeolians and Sicily, for agricultural reasons (which have become somewhat garbled), and found the Mediterranean climate so much to their liking that they durn near own the place. They're certainly a lot more healthy-looking in the Mediterranean than, say, where they belong, namely in our home state of New Mexico. Anyway, Marco knew of a place where ejecta from the 2003 eruption remained embedded in the fleshy pads that constitute the "leaves" of a prickly-pear, and wanted us to see that little bit of evidence that Stromboli isn't just a tourist attraction but a real live volcano that can do damage to the surroundings. Here's what it looked like:

Ginostra prickly pear

Bet that hurt -- or it would have if cactus had nerve endings! Some of the houses in Ginostra also took minor damage during that eruption, but unlike the cactus, that had all been repaired by the time we visited.

Eventually we waddled back to the boat, still full of this humongous and excellent lunch, to continue on around the island, making sure to stand well off from the shore as we passed the Sciara del Fuoco, where we could again see rockslides entering the ocean. Before returning to port and hotel, we paused at the tiny island of Strombolicchio offshore from Stromboli village. Strombolicchio is a "volcanic neck," the remnant of an extinct volcano that erupted long before the modern Stromboli and has been eroded into nothingness, apart from the central, solidified lava plug. It's uninhabited and maintained as a nature preserve, so you can't land there; however, swimming in the clear waters around it is allowed, and if you brought a snorkel mask, you can see far down into the depths that the volcano emerged from. Here's a view of Strombolicchio:

Strombolicchio

And with that, back to the village, and sleep. Web Site du Jour: http://www.friendsofbandelier.org/ , web site of the Friends of Bandelier, the volunteer group that helps with Bandelier National Monument back in the United States. What, you may ask, does a volunteer group for an attraction half way around the world have to do with this trip? Well, check back here tomorrow, and all will be made clear...