Dog Day Afternoon

Africa yields the oddest stories about people’s experiences when traversing not all of them full of the splendour and wonderment of the Dark Continent. Here’s a couple of tales that made us less than envious of their subject’s experiences.

Our fix-it man in Wadi Haifa was keen to relate to us the story behind his own motorcycle as he organised our papers for transporting ourselves and our bikes from Sudan to Egypt. “I too have a BMW”, he offered.
“Mine belonged to a German who had stopped along the Nile to take photos of hyenas as they returned to the desert from drinking the waters. He dismounted his bike and had become so engrossed in his photography as the animals approached he forgot reality. They ate him”
“After several days somebody approached the bike standing alone and discovered his skull. How they found out the tale was they developed his film and there were these magnificent photos of the dogs of death. Eventually as the bike was never claimed from Germany, it went up for auction and I got it”

This reminded me of an earlier tale I’d been told about a young Japanese honeymoon couple in one of the game parks of South Africa, when they happened in their vehicle across a lion sleeping off the noonday temperatures. So entranced were they by the magnificence of the beast, that she suggested he get out of the vehicle and go and stand by it for the perfect shot.

The lion awoke in for lunch.

They found her still sitting frozen stiff in the vehicle later that night, her new and now late husband’s bones lying where the lion had finished his meal.

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