A team of European divers fell out of a boat among treacherous ocean currents and drifted helplessly, overnight, in an ordeal that would remind people of the frigtening film Open Water if American consumers hadn’t instead spent their money that year on dreck like Matrix Reloaded and Elf. After 12 hours adrift the group swam against currents to reach the last island before the vast Indian Ocean: Rinca, one of two places that still harbors wild Komodo dragons. Komodos are 10-foot, 350 pound ambush predators that hide until a man-sized animal gets close enough and then run balls-out straight at you. Their saliva is famously dangerous because of a weird bacterial brew that can kill a bitten deer from septic shock within a day.
The divers — three from Britain and one each from France and Sweden — came face-to-face with the giant, carnivorous lizard on Rinca’s palm-fringed beach, and fought it off by pelting it with rocks and pieces of wood, Pariman, a port official said Sunday.
[…] The next day, rescuers aboard one of 30 boats searching the waters spotted them waving frantically [I bet. -ed.] on the shore and took them to Flores island for medical treatment.
Next year, Marseilles.