Watching the beautiful pictures of the habitats of the giant salamander in Japan, I've thought about some "similar" creek places not far from my home town, which are really poorly known, and extremely difficult to reach.
I will show this 3D to my friends Achim and Rica, who were with me in some similar places (Rio Baracca, for instance), but not at the Manzu lake, the most difficult excursion I've probably made in my life, with many failed attempts, before finally reaching the wonderful small lake, with the help of my friends Edoardo and Alessio.
"Manzu", in the vernacular language of the Genova territory, literally means "beef", and the legend tells that a beef died many years ago in that isolated, suggestive, small, yet very deep lake.
The snakes I've found in that pristine habitat are: H.viridiflavus, C.austriaca, N.natrix, N.maura, V.aspis, but almost certainly also the elusive Z.longissimus lives there.
Most of my pictures here are simply habitat pictures, because I could not grab the small aspisviper I saw (very fast moving among stones!), and I did not photograph the baby viridiflavus I captured: interested people, who want to know the exact position of this place, can contact me with P.M.
The starting point of the excursion is about one hour from Genova, in the direction of Milano, near the village of Masone.
The difficulties of the excursion (mostly without any beaten path) are well shown in the following few shots.