I have been trying to complete the Geocaching Road Trip Challenge. There are 5 types of caches you have to find to complete the challenge. One of them is an EarthCache, which is a virtual cache that teaches you about the geology of an area. We have one about 15 minutes from our house. I dragged my friend Savannah whom I've been trying to get interested in Geocaching.
So we went to the Solfatara. The Solfatara is a dormant volcano that still spews steam and sulfurous fumes. Solfatara means Land of Sulfur. It was created about 4000 years ago. Now it's a tourist destination!
A map of the Solfatara. You can camp here if you really want to.
Apparently at night they light up points of interest in fun colors.
Trail leading to the crater.
About here the sulfur vents smell more like cat urine than rotten eggs.
Now it smells like sulfur.
This vent it 150°C or 302°F and is at a pressure of 13 mbar.
The sulfur smell is also known as "Devil's Stink".
This is the Bocco Grande.
This article tells you that H2S (hydrogen sulfide) is responsible for good erections and vasodilation. This is why Pozzuoli, the town where the Solfatara is, constanly has a high birth rate.
Or it may be all the wine. Who really knows?
Wide expanse of dead volcano.
The Romans used to come here to sit among the Devil's Stink to cure what ailed them.
Just outside the Solfatara crater was another geocache, so we went to find it.
Savannah found her first cache and signed her first log!
It was in the yellow kinder egg thingie.
We also found a beautiful view of the bay of Pozzouli.
This concludes our Geocaching adventure for today.
