Meet Indiana Gianni—or, as he’s sometimes wanting to be known, Gargano Jones. In the picture, he’s just fashioned a knife from a river cobble which you could use to butcher a wild Boar if one should lay himself in front of you wanting to become sausage. Indiana has a couple vehicles that can take you down the steep canyons and torrente of the Foresta Umbra on Puglia’s Gargano promontory. He knows a lot about the local area, and I recommend him as a guide. You can read more about him: Indiana Gianni – Jeep Tours of the Foresta Umbra in the Gargano. There’s even a short video of his work on that page.
Gianni took us on a tour that went up a steep and in rainy times dangerous drainage called a torrente in Italy. The torrente was “graded” every year since forever. That’s because of two things: folks in these parts use them as roads when they’re dry and they want the water to exit quickly when it’s wet.
Gianna told us one of those stories from the olden days that had great meaning then and even now. During the age when travel in these parts was mainly done on the backs of donkeys, it seems a man in town had the foresight to finance a very small Fiat excavator for the job of clearing the torrente. He drove the beast deep into the canyon and started moving earth. All the folks in town followed him. There were asses everywhere. Parked, presumably.
It began to drizzle. Man and beast looked toward the sky and silently shared a single thought bubble, “this can’t be good.” The guy with the excavator kept on moving earth. In just a few minutes, water came gushing down the torrente. The excavator got stuck. Since it was financed with a loan, the guy had to save it. As folks started heading for the exits, there he was, the little beast belching smoke as its operator slammed it into reverse, then forward, hoping to extricate it from the river.
But soon thereafter, the big water came with a force that sent him kicking and screaming to his death.
So folks, don’t get too attached to your stuff. Pay cash for what you need. And sometimes an ass is worth two Fiats.
I made the last one up. You still want to go on the tour though. Right? Here: Indiana Gianni – Jeep Tours of the Foresta Umbra in the Gargano.
We, of course, survived.
How to have a tour with Indiana Gianni? Well, that’s a tough one. He doesn’t have a web page I could find. Best Get in touch with a hotel we’ve stayed at and highly recommend (especially for the restaurant), Hotel Villa America. Here’s the local tour page that mentions him.