It was a close brush with death but a 40-year-old British tourist bitten by a deadly viper while at a yoga retreat on Cyprus is recovering after getting swift hospitalization to counteract the venom.

Sam West said it happened during a meditation session when the Blunt-Nosed Viper, which can strike in .124 milliseconds, bit her on the leg as she was celebrating on the island with her wife Kate, said the British newspaper The Standard.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/cyprus-snake-bite-intensive-care-viper-bite-b1151754.html

They were at the Atlantica Aphrodite Hills hotel and she told the BBC that, “It quickly before I had time to react, bit me just above my left ankle. “I started to shake the snake off as I shouted that I had just been bitten by a snake,” she said.

“My leg was burning and throbbing, the pain was instantaneous,”: she said. She spent five days in a hospital and had to pick up some costs herself and it wasn’t said whether she had travel insurance for medical care.

She said she was waiting to hear from her insurance company about when she would be able to return home, but was not expected to be fit to fly until at least April 23, and had spent four days in intensive care.

She said that the meditation activities had been moved to a dance studio since the incident happened, and the hotel had also called pest control twice but that guests were on the lookout. The snake can reach more than 6 feet in length.

It wasn’t said if the hotel would bear any responsibility nor other details about the room where the attack happened or how the snake got in and a spokesperson for the travel agency TUI UK & Ireland said it was aware of the incident.

It wasn’t said if the snake was captured or what happened after she was bitten nor if animal control experts were called in to try to determine how it got into the site where there was a meditation platform.