Off night

The active volcano Stromboli, one of the Aeolian islands, rises out of the sea off the north-east coast of Sicily. It is forbidden to make the three-hour trek to the top without a guide, so I signed on with a chaperoned party of 30 tourists for a night climb. Our piratical-looking guide was a fierce disciplinarian. At each resting place he issued very specific instructions in harsh and oddly guttural French. Here we must drink something. Now we must put on our anoraks and hard hats. Here those that need to must urinate. Now we must eat something. And then, about halfway up, just before darkness fell, he ordered us to stop, turn around and look at the moon.

Obediently we turned and looked. The light was just beginning to fail. We were high enough now to make out the Calabrian coastline on the eastern horizon, above which a very full, orange moon was rising. And it was indeed quite something, I thought, to stand on the side of a volcano and see the moon rise above the edge of one continent, while a sultry sirocco breeze fanned our faces from another. ‘OK. So that’s the moon,’ said a cynic, though not loudly enough for the guide to hear.

We zig-zagged up the side of Stromboli in single file. Above the tree line the guide ordered us not to talk to conserve energy. The majority obeyed, but I was walking behind a German with proper trekking shoes who had surplus enough to chat up the woman in front of him. Speaking good English, he asked the woman where she came from and what she did. She was Swiss, she said, and she was a psychiatrist.