Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Stromboli - The world's oldest lighthouse

It has been called the world’s oldest light house, because ancient sailors from the Western Med, would be able to spot it sailing toward the Messina straight. The apostle Paul would have certainly seen it on his sail from Malta to Rome, and we timed it to sail by at night as we headed from the Aeolians back toward the mainland of Italy.

It didn’t disappoint! We started toward the north of the island and could see close to 20 boats ‘parked’ up ahead. It felt a bit like a drive in movie. All the boats were just sitting, too deep to anchor, so just sitting idle watching the show on the mountain top.

Every 10-15 minutes, a huge blast of lava would shoot up and out of the mountaintop spraying lava and rocks down the hill. On the larger ones, you could watch and hear the rocks tumbling all the way to the sea. It sounded like a low rumble and boats were advised to keep their distance, obviously, from the smoldering boulders. Pretty cool indeed!

We stayed for an hour or two and then by 11:00 we needed to make our way towards the mainland, another overnight sail, putting us closer to Rome. We had a long week of motoring/sailing ahead of us, and wanted to keep moving.

From back on the mainland ~
Hems

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