“Vulcano, Vulcano, Vulcano Island!” cries the hydrofoil captain heralding my arrival on one of the seven Aeolian Islands off the north coast of Sicily.
Vulcano, reached by hydrofoil from Milazzo in about an hour, is my first stop on a week-long hiking trip exploring Sicily’s volcanos.
The island takes its name from the Roman God of fire – Vulcan. The Romans believed the island’s volcano was the chimney to Vulcan’s workshop. The fire and gas that erupts form the volcano is Vulcan toiling away under the island. Its last major eruption was in 1888. Hopefully Vulcan is taking an RDO because, on today’s whistle-stop visit to the island, the group I’m travelling with will hike to the Gran Cratere, the crater of the active volcano that dominates the 21-square-kilometre island.
After dumping our luggage in the back of an obliging café, we hit the trail head, a short walk from the village. To reach the crater the group follows an 800-metre trail to the crater. The trail is steep though, climbing nearly 400 metres over its short distance. For much of the way we walk on grey gravel or ash. It’s a bit like walking in sand and rather heavy going.
Sign posts along the way provide a countdown of the metres left to reach the crater, which is quite encouraging. With about 200 metres to go to the crater the terrain suddenly changes to a clay surface that is much easier to walk on. Moving at our relatively gentle pace it’s taken just on an hour to reach the crater.
After taking in the incredible view across to the neighboring islands and enjoying a rest, we’re ready to take a circuit of the crater rim. That means we’ll have to run the gauntlet of fumaroles; cracks in the earth that spew out steam and gas, like the sulfur that’s responsible for the rotten egg stench surrounding us, and carbon dioxide. Not things that we want to inhale.
Just ahead the largest of the fumaroles emits a cloud of steam and smelly gas. I don’t know what Vulcan is doing down there but it really stinks. It engulfs the walking trail so the only way around the crater rim is through the stinky cloud.
Guide Nicoletta lends me a neck scarf to protect my face. I pull it up over my mouth and nose, bank robber style. I wait a few moments for the wind to dissipate the cloud of steam a little before moving forward. The steam is really hot and the stench of the gas almost overpowering. My sunglasses fog up instantly and I start to cough. Thankfully it only takes seconds to get through the cloud and back into clear air.
The rest of the way around the rim is easy with other fumaroles much smaller and gas and steam reaching no higher than knee level. Taking in the beautiful views, and enjoying the thought that I’m actually trekking on a live volcano, I think to myself, as I’ve done countless times before, I’m a lucky woman to get to do this.
Completing our loop, we retrace our steps back down the path to the village. The ashy surface is easy to walk on going down. It actually gives you a little help allowing you to slide a bit on each step.
After some lunch in the café we have a choice of how to spend the rest of our day on Vulcano. Our options are hanging out on a black sand beach or wallowing in some smelly mud in the island’s famous mud baths.
“If you take this your clothes and skin will smell for three days,” Nicoletta warns adding that it can also sting our eyes, destroy jewelry and we may need to throw away our bathers afterwards since the smell may be stained with gunk that will never come out. She’s not selling it very well.
Despite the less than impressive picture Nicoletta paints, after an “Oh go on,” from my roommate, I agree to join her at the mud pools.
Among Vulcano’s best known attractions, the mud is said to have healing properties that can assist with rheumatism, aching muscles and skin conditions.
“Careful of the eyes and 15 minutes only at one time,” we’re warned by the attendant as we pay the entry fee.
A quick change into my bathers and I step tentatively into the murky warm pool. Under my feet gravelly mud squelches between my toes with each step. It’s pretty gross but not as bad as I was expecting.
Every now and again a jet of warm water spurts up from Vulcan’s workshop beneath us, like a jet in a spa bath. They create little hot pockets in the pool. I scoop up some warm mud and cautiously spread it over my arms and on my cheeks, nose and forehead and let it dry. I must look a fright.
The tip, I’m told, is to soak in the mud for 15 minutes then make a dash to the sea a few metres away to rinse in the cooler water. I give it a go. The black beach and its sharp little rocks is so hard to walk on I’m forced to crawl to the water’s edge. While I sit in the water for a few minutes, a hot jet of water shoots up out of the sea bed and scalds my foot (it later blisters from the burn). It feels like a hot needle being stuck into my foot. That’s enough for me. I gingerly remove myself from the water and hobble back to the mud pool. After a quick second dip in the mud I scrub it off in a cold shower. Later on the skin I’d caked in mud does feel extra soft and smooth. My bathers aren’t stained (they are black) and my skin doesn’t smell too bad. At least my roommate will smell the same.
After collecting our luggage it’s back to the hydrofoil wharf to continue on to Lipari. As the hydrofoil lurches against the little wharf, I can hear the captain call ‘Vulcano, Vulcano, Vulcano Island!”