Colin Donihue

After a bit more rigamarole in Foggia I was excited to put that part of Italy behind me and I went straight north to a smaller coastal town called Tremoli. Tremoli is the primary staging ground for ferries to the four Tremiti islands, about an hour off the coast of Italy and, I hoped, somewhat comparable to the Greek islands I was on last week(!).

I decided to splurge and found a nice cheap hotel. It was great to sleep in a bed last night and have a nice warm shower. So worth the extra 15€! Tremoli is extremely nice; comfortable, clean with a vibrant and active downtown and beautiful sand beach. It’s a nice contrast to Bari and Foggia, both of which seemed a bit dirty and run down.

Here are a few pictures from around and about my hotel:

Beautiful eh? I wish the pictures truly did it justice.

I woke up early this morning to head to the docks to get the ferry out to the islands. I’m glad I did, it was totally full.

The islands were absolutely beautiful. Most notable is a castle/fort/monastery dominating one of them. I’ll have to go back with an Italian speaker because I’d love to hear more about the history.

My first step getting off the boat was to actually get on another to get a quick view of all of the islands. My hope was that I’d get a sense for the different vegetation types and be able to prioritize my lizard searching. Here’s a picture of my view:

Unfortunately I wasn’t nearly pushy enough to get a good seat so while I saw a lot, my pictures are crappy because everyone was standing to take pictures. Ah well.

Tour behind, I hoofed it through the castle taking pictures every which way barely breaking stride and made it to the wilds on the other side of the island. Again, lots of spiny bushes, but there were also lizards! Hurrah!! I managed to bloody both of my legs but got some good data about the species on that island. After a couple of hours, some nice scenery and lunch I decided to move to the next island.

The “big island” had a totally different feel. There were big tall pine trees all through. I did find lizards but I think it might be too different to be comparable to my other sites. Still it was very beautiful:

And a couple more pretty shots of the harbor. The water was incredibly clear. I hope I can figure out a way to get back here!