sailing maloo: about sulphur and wonderful islands

after a night's rest in messina, we made our way up to the liparian islands north of sicily.

first time we dropped the hook (i.e. the anchor) in a bay just under the vulcano of volcano. a quite impressive panorama, i tell you!
the next morning (after a rather uncomfortable night as the boat was rocking like a joyride) we went up to examine the crater. a rather exhausting walk later we got greeted by the most amazing view from up the top and smoke holes that had the most rotten sulphury smell coming out of them. (no wonder people associate the devil with those feral fumes ;) )

after a swim in 28,6° warm water we went up to the north of lipari and found a nice anchor spot there just under the old pumice stone mine.
it was the clearest water i ever swam in...so amazingly turquoise, but hardly any fish.

another rocking night later, mark and i were rather buggered from the lack of sleep. for some reason, with the swell side on, the movement of a boat is much worse when being at anchor than being under way.

not only because we needed some rest, but also because of the heavy wind predicted for sunday to monday night, we decided to treat ourselves to a couple of nights rest in a marina in marina salina. when we pulled up, we should have known that there was a reason to why there was hardly any boats there....soon we found out, that this was owed to the price! but my husband has secret skills that only somebody selling carpets and camels could have developed - and he talked the marina-people down in price like it was the most normal thing to do! - good on him!!!!!

and god, was it a treat to have a couple of nights calm sleep! - we did a bus-trip around the beautiful island of salina, had the best granita in the world! and relaxed.

if there's something we learned in the last couple of weeks it would have to be, that our schedule for the mediterranean is very tight. at the moment we both are rather exhausted by rushing from one spot to the next, and decided to pick our spots for the future....do less but explore better. let's see how we go!