The Path of Turtles
Since many years the loggerhead sea turtles (Caretta Caretta) have chosen Palinuro to nest. And not just any beach, but one of the most beautiful and least known by mass tourism.
This path winds along a beach that is one of the most important open-air salt pans: for millennia, the salt can be seen and collected from the long line of rocks that runs along the shore, so suggestive as to create an almost lunar landscape.
And for centuries this salt called marinello has been much sought after by noble families from all over Europe, from Philip II of Spain to Baron Antonini, who describes it as one of the most valuable in one of his essays dated 1745.
The rocks alternate with fine sand, habitat of rare and precious species such as the sea lily, a splendid and fragrant flower, and the sea fennel, with a delicious flavour, used in traditional cuisine, and many other species, such as myrtle, mastic, agave.
The uncontaminated and not anthropized environment gives the turtles a protected and safe place to lay eggs.
For years, the spectacle of the traces of their passage and the hatching of the eggs has been added to the spectacle of nature: myriads of small turtles are born here, and by mysterious law of nature they will return to lay here once they are adults.
The Anton Dohrn Zoological Station of Naples, which studies and protects this magnificent species, protects the place and the nests, promptly secured and monitored.
The excursion, perfect for true nature lovers, allow participants to observe in total respect such an exciting natural phenomenon in a context of extremely rare beauty.
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