Africa from a Bike Seat

Andrew Cameron was pedalling his mountain bike up the left side of a double-track dirt road in Tanzania. The sun was shining and the 27-year-old Canadian was admiring the lush green landscape when he spotted a dark shape in his peripheral vision to the right on the road ahead. As he got closer, the black form suddenly rose a metre into the air and assumed an attack posture. It was a black mamba, Africa's deadliest and most aggressive snake. Just before Cameron passed, it darted into the bush. "It was only after I passed that I realized what I had just seen," Cameron recalls. "I began yelping, 'Holy crap! That was a black mamba!' I was lucky to be in the left track that day, rather than the right."