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Raining fire and brimstone on my head

From the Mail on Sunday
'You must go now,' said Gioacchino, the captain of our chartered yacht, tapping his watch and smiling his goofy smile. 'Five o'clock, yes? Your guide is waiting for you.'
In other seas and on other boats you may land on an island. On Stromboli, you tie up to a volcano: a massive cone; a giant, black and grey mountain of cinders; a huge, menacing iceberg of burnt rock. Our little anchor was now lodged on its enormous flank, like a staple in an elephant.
We clambered into the rubber dinghy. I turned to Bob as he lowered himself on to my hand. 'What are those things on your feet?' He looked down. There had been instructions to wear hiking boots. He was wearing his Johnny Moke cowboy loafers. 'Well, they'll do,' he muttered. The last of a few Sicilian bathers was picking her matching black-bikinied form and sable froth of curls off the black beach. Bob put a foot in the surf and squeaked.
The eight of us hurried up the pavement-wide lane between the squat, earthquake-proof houses. Behind low clay walls were gardens and caper bushes, weathered boards and broken roofs. Stromboli may lack the polish of Panarea, its neighbour in the Aeolian Islands, where the wealthy have imported an airbrushed lotus-eating style (from Indonesia for some reason), but here, where the hot 'bombs' might fall out of the sky at any time, the place seemed more lived in.
Under the cafe, opposite the church, was a little room papered with giant maps of Etna and Stromboli. It was full of swarthy men concentrating on the serious business of taking money off tourists. A fat bloke in red shorts raised two hands spread out towards me: 'Otto?' 'Si.' He pushed a pink ticket at me and I wrote out my name laboriously in triplicate. 'I just think he wants you to sign it,' said Robert. 'Sign it Otto.'
Red Shorts handed out eight torches and plastic hard hats. He looked up at Bob, and then down at his shoes. He made vigorous gestures. 'No, no,' he said and passed him some ill-fitting climbing boots.
It seemed we eight were now part of a much larger group of about 20. The man with the officiousness of a short Italian possessing something signed in triplicate started gesturing again. 'Duo!'
'I think they want us in some sort of crocodile.' 'How many does that make then?' Robert counted as we marched off. 'Difficult to say. I don't know if that man is coming on the mountain trip or just walking his dog.' We were walking, two by two, along what appeared to be a perfectly ordered promenade. Joggers whistled by. A little boy on a tricycle tootled on ahead. I took off the hard hat and tried to attach it to my rucksack.

Read more in our destination guide to Sicily.