Trekking sailing yoga retreat in Sicily - Eolian Islands
11-17 Sept 2018
Crew: Carla, Joanna, Roberto
Guests: Natalie, Raya, Agris, Martin, Robert
We started our journey from Naples - Borgo Marinaro by Castel Dell’Ovo. We sailed over Night and Day to Eolian Islands in Sicily. The first stop was in Panarea where we had our first evening yoga practice which I delivered to our 5 participants. The rest of crew members Roberto and Carla were preparing some delicious dinner. As we were full on board I slept under the stars on the mattresses on the deck. All seven nights were unforgettable. I loved watching the stars each time I would get up. The sunrise the next day was always spectacular. 6am getting up and practicing yoga on the beach 6.30-8/8.30am. Then coming back on board by swim and having some breakfast. Then swimming or sightseeing or trekking, having lunch on board, sunset yoga practice and dinner were part of our daily routine.
I’ve visited 3 times in last 7 years Eolian islands and I’ve never climbed up the Stromboli and Vulcano. Because of one of the participants Robert who was passionate about trekking and volcanos we all went up to see the active Stromboli. It was such an experience. I’ve been on few volcanos in Central and South America and they all were very high (3000-4000m) but I have never seen from such a short distance such an intensity of volcano’s eruptions in 40min. Apparently Stromboli is the only volcano in the world where you can see crater so close because it’s located below the mountain from where we all can see the crater. The explosions where scary and impressive. At some point I thought that we all were going to explode. There were hundreds of people watching this phenomenon of nature. The energy overall was super strong and the experience was very spiritual. It was worthy to do 1000m 6 hour climb up and down. You need a guid to go to see the crater of Stromboli. Our guid was Manuel originally from Barcelona who’s been living in Italy in Dolomites since 22 years. I had a nice chat with him during our walk and he looked after me. He is a very nice person, we even discussed some future opportunities of doing trekking Yoga retreat either in Sicily or in Dolomites.
We sailed to another destination - Vulcano.
The next day after a sunrise yoga practice and Italian breakfast at the caffe (croissant and cappuccino) we went to climb Vulcano. This walk was much shorter and easier and didn’t require any guide. So we went up to see the crater of inactive Vulcano. We took hundreds of yoga pictures immersed in a wonderful landscape of volcano’s crater on one side and the sea coast line on the opposite side. It was just a perfect photo shooting location. It took us 4 hours to climb 500m Vulcano because of our photo shooting distraction. Definitely it was worthy to visit and climb Vulcano.
We sailed to Lipari where one of our participants - Robert went to visit one of the most famous historian museums in the world. In a meantime we practiced yoga by sunrise with a front sea behind the museo. We found the spot on the grass in the park with the trees and we practiced yoga there. At some point we’ve been excused by a guardian. He asked us to leave as they were going to close the gate. We had a nice practice slightly shorter than we would usually have. But it was worth of the experience.
One of our guests had some adventure while waiting for us to come out of the church in Lipari by the archeological museum. He didn’t want to enter the church without his t-shirt on so he decided to wait for us outside the church. After 5 min we left the church and Martin was no there. We looked for him and couldn’t find him anywhere. Eventually he appeared all excited and slightly scared and told us the story.
Once he entered the church the guardian approached him asking if he wanted to see secret places inside the church which are not accessible by tourists. He accepted his invitation and entered. After a couple of minutes the guardian started approaching him closer and closer. When he touched Manuel, Manuel decided to escape and he evacuated himself. Then we met and he told us this story. It’s quite scary to enter the church, you never know what’s going to happen...
Our trip was amazing full of trekking, swimming, sunbathing, yoga practice, talks and rest. We sailed back over day and night to Borgo Marinaro on 17th of September and said goodbye 👋 to our guest who left for London.
