Aeolian Islands (Part 4) – Isola Vulcano

Having watched the eruptions at Stromboli in the early hours of Monday 16 June, we continued (under motor, still no wind!) south to Vulcano, the closest of the Aeolian Islands to the Sicilian mainland. There are 2 good anchorages at the north end of Vulcano, right in the shadow of the Gran Cratere, one on the east side (Porto di Levante), the other on the west (Porto di Ponente). With the wind forecast to come from the north-east, we decided to anchor in Porto di Ponente despite the fact that there was a little swell coming in from the west. When we arrived there was only one other yacht in the anchorage, a Rustler 36 called Alice but she up-anchored and left soon after we arrived which was a shame as we would have liked to have met her owners.

It is very scenic with an outer rim of craggy rocks, presumably left from one of the larger eruptions, which encircles the current volcanic peak.

Almost as soon as we had laid our anchor there was a great cry of ‘fishies, fishies’ and a small fishing boat appeared, much like the genie in Aladdin. We haggled a little [Ed: difficult when you speak virtually no Italian] and bought 4 fresh fish, which solved the problem of dinner for the next couple of nights and were very good. For the next few days whilst we were anchored off Vulcano and Lipari the cry of ‘fishies, fishies’ from the local fishing boats punctated our mornings and evenings; clearly they have discovered how much cruising yachtsmen like fish. [Ed: yet how frequently cruising yachtsmen can’t catch fish!]

In the afternoon we took the dinghy ashore to explore a little. Even at the anchor the smell of hydrogen sulphide (rotton eggs) was apparent, it only got stronger on the land. Unsurprisingly perhaps, a lot of the houses and garden walls were covered by wisteria and other sweetly perfumed plants. We wandered into the town by a circuitous route and failed to find the tourist information office to get a map because it had been closed. Happily, one of the island’s hire car companies had pinned flyers, complete with a crude map (crayon map by Luigi aged 3?), around the town so we half-inched one and used it to find a more direct route back to the dinghy [Ed: as well as up to Gran Cratere the following morning!]. We didn’t need the map to find the mud baths – you just need to follow your nose for that! Nicky had had thoughts of trying them out but, having been warned by our guidebook to the island that the smell would stay on one’s skin for days, and having actually smelt the mud baths in the flesh, we took some photos and beat a hasty retreat.

Having viewed the various sulphurous rock formations, the black beach off which we were anchored and the harbour with the other anchorage, we trundled back to BV via the direct route (useful map) and, in the process came across the Institute of Vulcanology. Despite the sign outside professing it to be open morning and afternoon every day, it had obviously suffered the same fate as the tourist office as it was never open during our stay in the island. We both thought that a shame as we were keen to learn more about volcanoes in general and Vulcano in particular; maybe the institute would have had more visitors, and therefore remained open, had it been closer to the harbour or the route up the volcano.

After a disturbed night’s sleep (the wind went round to the north-west and we spent an hour in the middle of the night getting the outboard off the dinghy and checking that the yachts close to us weren’t dragging their anchors onto us) we set off to get a close-up look at the smoking fumeroles and caldera of the volcano. At the start of the path up the hill there is a sign warning of the dangers of poisoning from the smoke from the fumeroles – having smelt the mud baths we could well believe it!

The climb up was a lot shorter that we had expected, just half an hour from the base to the rim of the crater, and the extra height gave us good views of the anchorages and town below. At the edge of the crater is a helipad, presumably conveniently located for extracting expired tourists who have got too close to the fumeroles. We used it as a good platform from which to look down into the caldera.

We had planned to follow the main path all around the circumference and up to the highest point but it led straight through 5 or 6 fumeroles all enthusiastically belching smoke so, taking heed of the warnings we saw at the start, we bypassed them using a smaller path, crossing ground that sounded disconcertingly glassy and hollow (paranoia kicking in?).

Nevertheless this path still went reasonably close to some of the smoking vents. The colour is so intense that you could see the yellow even from onboard BV.

View from the highest point

The whole circuit from the beach, up to the highest point and back down to the beach took us an hour and 20 minutes. We were glad that we had chosen to do it early in the morning to avoid the hottest part of the day.

When we got back down to BV the wind, which had dropped off entirely just before dawn, was starting to build again from the north-west as expected, so we moved around to the Porto di Levante. From here we had a better view of the sulphurous rock formations and were closer to the town but a frontal system went through in the afternoon (the high-level cloud ahead of it had helped to keep us cool on our morning climb) and it poured with rain for the rest of the day, so we hid below.

Happily, the front had cleared the next morning so we managed to get some sunny pictures, including one of the yacht that dragged her anchor into us just before we left to move on to Lipari.