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| Lipari was an unexpected gem |
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| Leaving our anchorage on Basiluzzo and our superyacht neighbour astern. |
The
Romans believed that Vulcano was the
chimney of the god Vulcan's workshop and therefore named the island after him. (Obviously
the name caught on for other smoking mountains all over the world) The island
had grown due to his periodic clearing of cinders and ashes from his forge. The
earthquakes that either preceded or accompanied the explosions of ash etc.,
were considered to be due to Vulcan making weapons for Mars and his armies to
wage war. The Romans used the island mainly for raw materials, harvesting wood and
mining alum and sulphur.
Currently,
around 470 people live on the island, mainly deriving their income from
tourism. It has several hotels and cafes, the important attractions being the volcano’s
active crater, beaches, hot springs and sulphur mud baths.
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| Isla Basiluzzo to Volcano – 23.8 Nautical Miles – 3 Hours 32 Minutes Average Speed 3.6 Knots – Max 6.9 Knots |
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| Our anchorage on Vulcano with the gaping crater just to the south. |
We
anchored in the shadow of the volcanic peak in a nice sandy bay just off a
beach that featured steaming mud pools at one end. The mud is said to possess
healing and soothing qualities for the skin guaranteed to make you look much
younger. Swim in the pool then cover your face and body in the mud, let it dry
and form a mask, then rinse it off in the sea where hot springs make the water
warm and bubbly, like a natural Jacuzzi.
As
soon as we got ashore a bee line was made for the mud baths. Karen, Tony and
Lynne were keen but Rob was more than a little sceptical deciding he’d make the
sacrifice of staying out of the ‘vile
sulphur smelling cesspit’ and photograph the immersion and transformation
of the soon to be younger looking trio. They thought it was cheap at only Two Euro
for the dubious privilege, so in they stepped. ‘Shit it’s hot,’ Karen exclaimed before taking the plunge
undeterred. (Or should that be under turd)
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| Let's all jump in the almost boiling mud on Vulcano. It'll be fun. |
After
rinsing off a liberal coating of the milky coloured sludge in the sea, our now rosey
red threesome headed for the showers to discover they were coin operated at two
Euros for about thirty seconds of water. Nice scam! But wait it got better. The
very acidic and it turns out, low radioactive mud also stripped all the
platinum coating off the white gold chain and pendent Karen was wearing, ate
away her silver anklet and destroyed all the buckles on her bikinis. Another
ten minutes in there and she would have been naked. Yep! Two Euro was a
bargain.
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| Obviously this girl was just trying to save at least half her swimmers from being eaten away by the mud. |
Later
that evening after another swim in the sea and showers on board, all three did
remark over a wine or two that their skin felt much younger and smoother. That
seemed logical to Rob as he espoused that clearly the outer couple of layers
of ‘older’ skin had been eaten
off living newer younger skin exposed. He expected all three to glow in the dark once the sun set.
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| The mud pits are at the far end of the black sand beach at the foot of the very much live and kicking volcano. |
Next
morning we discovered a bigger problem than the fact all the swimmers had lost much of their colour and still stunk
of sulphur. Our batteries weren’t charging when we ran the engine and despite
checking all the obvious potential culprits, we couldn’t find why. We had
little choice but to head to one of the ridiculously expensive pontoon berths
at the nearby island of Lipari and see if we could find a marine electrician to
investigate.
It
was only a short hop of a couple of miles over to the largest of the Aeolian Islands but getting a berth was a
challenge. The town of Lipari is located on a large, open bay where the only public
berths are found on pontoon fingers that stretch out from the shore. Each
is run by different concession holders who have one thing in common, an
understanding of supply and demand. The pontoons don’t offer any shower or
toilet facilities. They provide little protection from any weather from the
north east to south east or the constant washing machine of wake from the
fleets of high speed ferries entering and leaving the bay from before dawn to
well after dark. After circling around and around for almost two hours, we were
finally able to secure a spot on the pontoon furtherest from the town centre
but adjacent to the main fuel pontoon which ensured a constant supply of
additional wake to sorely test our fenders. But this is the peak summer season so for the privilege we were only
required to pay 115 Euro( $160aud) per night. Oh and it had to be cash. Wouldn’t
want the pesky Government getting a share for taxes would we.
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| The fuel dock was right beside on Lipari with toys like this huge rib making plenty of wake to keep us rocking and rolling all day. |
For
a spot we had not intended visiting, Lipari proved to be a very pleasant stop
on our Aeolian wanderings and we made the most of our time here exploring and
enjoying this delightful town and it’s very friendly people. Lynne was of the opinion the boat's
electrical issues was a male problem and decided she and Karen would get off
the boat while Rob and Tony set about getting our battery charging sorted out
with the assistance of Mario, a quite elderly marine electrician steered in our
direction by the pontoon manager. He arrived at the boat with no shoes, no
shirt, no tools and no English. A game of charades ensued to try explain the
problem but that proved fairly unsuccessful until Rob thought to start the
engine and point to the gauge showing Mario that no charge was going into the
house batteries that power all our lights, instruments, autopilot etc. ‘Ahhhh!’ said Mario before starting a new
round of charades which we successfully guessed meant he wanted a screwdriver. Within
seconds he had the cover off a relay box above the engine and pointed to one
part of it exclaiming ‘Kaput’. He
unscrewed it off the bulkhead, pointed to five o’clock on his watch, said we
have no idea what and disappeared off the stern and down the pontoon with the
offending relay box. After a brief
conference to try to work out what just went on, we resolved that maybe he meant
that he would be back at five o’clock.
Meanwhile
Karen was being lead all over Lipari by Lynne for some serious retail therapy and
art gallery visits. Having not had any ‘girl
time’ like this at all since she was last with Lyn back in the UK eighteen months
previously, Karen was initially finding the whole experience a little weird. Since the UK she’d only ever been shopping etc with Rob, Marc or both which she assures
us is a very different affair and she was very much out of practice. By the
time they got to the long lunch she was starting to feel better about it all. When discovering even more galleries and shops full of local art, crafts and
designer fashions from Milan followed she was starting to get right back into the swing
of things and was totally in the groove before the second cocktail was drained
near the end of day stop at a trendy bar.
Back
at the boat Rob and Tony were starting to fret. Not about but the girls not
being back, but rather, where was Mario. It was after six by now and they were
starting to think they may have misinterpreted his communication.
A
little before seven our wiry septuagenarian electrician appeared striding down
the pontoon full of life, still shirtless, still shoeless but clearly not clueless. He had
the pontoon manager in toe to act as interpreter this time and quickly conveyed that no replacement relay box
was available on the island so he would attempt to fix ours and would return
the following afternoon about five. As Mario departed Karen and Lynne arrived
announcing that they’d had a lovely day and now it was time for the boys to
take the girls out to dinner. Cruising is such a hard life for the women sometimes.
We
did have a wonderful dinner in one of the manner restaurants in the old town
centre and all four of us spent the following day discovering many of the
treasures left behind over the various, Greek, Moor, Roman and even Norman eras
of this historic island township, all interspersed with some more fine food and
wine of course.
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| Karen and Tony in foodie heaven on Lipari |
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| It was awesome exploring the winding streets of the older parts of Lipari town |
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| This building has been everything including a Greek then Roman temple and Moorish mosqueover the centuries of various occupations of the island before finally being reborn again as a Norman Cathedral. |
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| Remnants of Greek columns in the cloister of the cathedral |
Super
Mario turned up right on cue in the late afternoon and had Alcheringa sending electrical power to all her batteries again
within ten minutes. Fantastic. For his three trips to the boat, searching the
island for a replacement before finally
jury rigging the unit to get us out of trouble and refitting it his bill was
50Euro. ($70aud) Unbelievable.
Next
morning Tony and Lynne bade us an all too soon farewell as they caught the fast ferry
across to Palermo on Sicily before flying home. We may not have got to do quite as
much sailing as we’d planned but we’d certainly had a ball.
AN
APOLOGY
Since
returning to Australia at the end of last European summer’s wanderings around
the Med, we have been extremely busy, catching up with friends and family,
finishing and publishing our first book, ‘Stuff
it. Let’s go sailing anyway’, mounting a very successful exhibition of
Karen’s artwork and buying a new boat to sail the western Pacific and South
East Asia. We’re now working at finalising
the story of our adventures in the Med in this blog and getting it all back to
current so keep checking back for new instalments.
To stay right up to date with what we’re up to these days and see lots more photos check out and 'like' our Dreamtime Sail Facebook page at Dreamtime Sail on Facebook
To stay right up to date with what we’re up to these days and see lots more photos check out and 'like' our Dreamtime Sail Facebook page at Dreamtime Sail on Facebook
If you have only recently discovered our blog and would like to read how it all started, or work through our previous adventures, click the link to go back to our first blog entry. Stuff it. Let's just go sailing anyway. We hope you enjoy reading the previous posts to catch up on our story.
