I had some excitement on my daily trek up a local hill last week when I nearly stood on the biggest snake I've ever seen outside of a zoo. I was hoofing up a slope when I glanced over at some ancient ruins to my right and then heard a rumble in the rocks beside my left foot. When I looked down this serpent about 1.5m long and as thick as my wrist was wriggling down the path away from me as hard as it could go - is was obviously more scared of me than I was of it! It was amazing how quickly it moved. The path was alive with lizards that day as it was very hot and they were sunning themselves so the snake must have been hunting them. Anyways, they have several types of poisonous snakes here and the locals told me that the hot weather brings them out and the hills then become dangerous so I've been walking on the beach paths ever since. Apparently one of the snake types is so deadly that I would have had trouble getting to hospital from the hillside before keeling over had it bitten me and the one I described to them sounded like one of those - lucky I didn't stand on it!