Great report and lovely pictures which remind me of my trip there in 2011. I had previously caught
Chalcides on Crete but the Maltese ones seemed to be 3 times the size of the Cretan ones. One day I looked over a fence in the northern end of Malta and saw a snake, foolishly I tried to capture it instead of taking it's picture and it escaped. Since that day I have tried to convince myself that it must have been a juvenile
Hierophis viridiflavus but every time I see a picture of an Algerian whip snake I am sure that is what I saw that day.
Bobby, did your friends in the park remember you