The Mediterranean Sea’s most explosive volcano.

As a seasoned MedTrekker who’s hiked over 7,000 kilometers around the Mediterranean Sea, I’m somewhat surprised that I made two major concessions to climb swiftly-and-legally to the top of Stromboli yesterday.

For the first time ever on my MedTrek, I arranged to take the trip with both a group and a guide. We hiked up the volcano in Sicily’s Aeolian Islands during the early evening and returned, adding lights to our protective helmets, after dark.

Odysseus-looking Franco Sonzogni keeps me out after dark.

Turned out, as I’d been advised, to be a smart move.

There are not only signs threatening a 500-euro fine for anyone hiking without a guide above 400 meters but I also saw numerous feds from Italy’s Guardia di Finanza, as well as rangers, patrolling the potentially dangerous mountain. They were looking for errant solo MedTrekkers among the 200-300 daily visitors making the climb in groups of twenty up the mountain that starred in the Roberto Rossellini’s 1950 film “Stromboli: Land of God.”

A walk alone will cost me a 500-euro fine.

Fortunately there are only eight in our group (four solo Americans and two couples, one from Italy and one from France) joining Franco Snozogni, who’s been a guide here for five years and works in the Alps in the winter. He shows-and-tells us about everything from absinthe and caper plants amidst the lush vegetation to why Stromboli explodes every twenty minutes, what happened during the 2002 eruption, when to put on our helmets and the name of the island off Stromboli’s shore.

I love saying this nearby island’s name – Strombolicchio!

Franco even supplied face masks to enable us to avoid severe sulfur inhalation as we slowly marched three hours up to the 900-meter summit (another 2,000 meters of Stromboli is under the sea) and marveled at the fluffy hanging clouds, a startlingly splendorous sunset and the constant smoke, steam, explosive noises, incandescent brimstone and burning magma emanating from Stromboli’s most active vent. When darkness fell, we spent over an hour witnessing the most enchanting ongoing fireworks show on earth.

Sunset view of the Stromboli’s most explosive vent.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire (every 20 minutes).

It was cold, windy and sulfur smelling on top of Stromboli — and everyone without gloves regretted leaving them behind. But as Franco led us down a dark, steep and slippery path of black sand back to the port of San Vincenzo, everyone agreed that the guide, group tour and evening full of endless explosions, exultant eruptions and lots of satisfied human noises was a more-than-memorable blast.

The Idiot waits for dark.

If you’re interested you can find Franco most nights @[wpgmappity id=”6″]

Besides being bitten/stung (yes, again because, a doctor here insisted, “Your testosterone level is so high!”) by a jellyfish while swimming off the boat near the island of Panarea en route to Stromboli, I had another enjoyable outing yesterday.

I was blown away (an apt synonym for “overwhelmed” on the windy island of King Aeolus that’s depicted in Homer’s “The Odyssey”) and humbled by the wealth, in both quantity and quality, of the historical panorama of artifacts and remnants in Lipari’s Aeolian Archeological Museum. This magical history tour attractively displays an astonishing array of relics and objets d’art from simple-but-utilitarian prehistoric/Neolithic and Bronze Age tools to the more ornate leftovers from the Greeks, the Romans and the Middle Ages.

I once again realize that if I were the first man on earth, I’d have trouble coming up with any of these inventions or making many of these self-manufactured articles – even the basic obsidian blades not to mention the ornate kraters, amphorae, coins and jewelry. And forget inventing the wheel or lever.

Heck, I would have been so baffled back in the day that I might not have been able to procreate.

I plan to discuss all these thoughts in depth with Toby Lorenzen, a backpacking Massachusetts college professor of my vintage who was out late with Franco and me last night watching the Stromboli fireworks, when we MedTrek to the top of the crater on the island of Vulcano tomorrow. That island, which gave us the word “vulcanology,” is another place where Vulcan, the god of fire whose Greek name is Hephaestus, is said to have worked.

Text and Photos: Joel Stratte-McClure

Photos of Joel Stratte-McClure and Franco Snozogni: Toby Lorenzen

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About Joel

Joel Stratte-McClure has been a global trekker since the 1970s. He lived in France for over 30 years, working as a journalist, before he turned his attention to a unique life-time-project of walking the shores of the Mediterranean. The first 4,401 kilometers are explored in his inspirational and entertaining first book "The Idiot and the Odyssey: Walking the Mediterranean." The next 4,401 kilometers are covered in the gods-filled sequel, "The Idiot and the Odyssey II: Myth, Madness and Magic on the Mediterranean,” published on Valentine's Day 2013. The last 4,401 kilometers will be discussed in the last book of the trilogy currently entitled "The Idiot and the Odyssey III: Alexander the Great Walks the Mediterranean."