In Ginostra, a charming (really charming) cluster of a few houses awaits you, including a church and a post office, all embedded in exactly the kind of Mediterranean vegetation one hopes to encounter. It may be a good idea to visit one of the two restaurants if necessary, thus sitting out the hottest hours of the day accompanied by a sequence of cappuccini.

Since the idea is to reach the crater at sunset, a fairly well-thought-out schedule can make your day. We paid the bill at **5:55 p.m.** The path climbing Stromboli from Ginostra first leads north, then passes a fairly large solar power plant hidden among the bushes. After reaching the steep northern coast at **Punta d’u Curovu** at **6:20 p.m.**, the trail turns sharply east, and things become a little more complicated.

Because the entire volcano now seems to be officially off-limits, except when accompanied by paid guides, most of the trails are nowadays unused and therefore difficult to follow, with all sorts of nasty bushes obstructing your way. Do not try this in shorts; wear strong long trousers instead.

It is a pity that these trails are not maintained, all the more so since the whole area appears to be some kind of natural park, probably absorbing public subsidies. Interest in accurate terrain topography also seems not to be particularly well developed, since there are as many different trail indications as there are map publishers. Nor do local people seem to know much about the current state of their trails. Do not even try asking for a suitable trail — or ask the same question to at least two different people in order to receive two contradictory answers.

So what? Before leaving, consult Google Earth and your intuition.

As we continued our climb, at around **7:20 p.m.** the vegetation suddenly vanished, letting us enter a metaphysical, moon-like landscape. The first smoke ejections gave us a grand welcome. We reached the rim of the crater at around **7:55 p.m.**, just in time for the compulsory sunset scenography.

From the english wikipedia: Stromboli is remarkable because of the length of time for which it has been in almost continuous eruption. For at least the last 2,000 years, the same pattern of eruption was maintained, in which explosions occurred at the summit craters with mild to moderate eruptions of incandescent volcanic bombs at intervals ranging from minutes to hours, something which proved a considerable tourist attraction. This characteristic Strombolian eruption, as it is known, is also observed at other volcanoes worldwide. Eruptions from the summit craters typically result in few second-lasting mild energetic bursts emitting ash, incandescent lava fragments and lithic blocks up to a few hundred meters high. Stromboli's activity is almost exclusively explosive, but lava flows do occasionally occur - an effusive eruption in 2002 was its first in 17 years.

The mildly explosive eruptions are also occasionally punctuated by much larger eruptions. The largest eruption of the last hundred years occurred in 1930, and resulted in the deaths of several people and the destruction of a number of houses by flying volcanic bombs. Large eruptions occur at intervals of years to decades, and the most recent large eruption began in 2002, causing the closure of the island to non-residents for several months. The eruption started with a lava flow (29 December 2002) along the "Sciara del Fuoco" flank that rapidly reached the sea. On 30 December 2002, a huge volume of rocks collapsed from the "Sciara del Fuoco" generating at least two landslides and many tsunami waves. The highest wave was 10 m high and caused serious damage at the Stromboli village. On 5 April 2003, a strong explosion from the summit crater ejected rocks that reached Ginostra village, damaging some houses. The eruption terminated on July 2003.

On 27 February 2007, two new craters opened on the island, with lava flowing into the sea from one of them.