Nahuelito

A Lake Monster reported in the Nahuel Huapí Lake of Argentina and Patagonia is called Nahuelito (after the lake where it lives). The huge lake covers over two hundred square miles at the base of the Patagonian mountains, a perfect site for a watery cryptid, variously described as a giant serpent or a huge hump.

The “Patagonian plesiosaur “as it is sometimes called” apparently first attracted press coverage only in the 1920s, though sightings go back well into the previous century. The international search for the Nahuelito began in 1922, when Clementi Onelli, the Buenos Aires Zoo director, was sent accounts of large unknown tracks and matted weeds on shore at the same time locals claimed to be seeing a monster in the middle of the lake. They said the creature had a swan-like neck. A subsequent expedition, led by zoo superintendent Jose Cihagi, produced nothing of consequence. Writing in the July 22, 1922, issue of Scientific American, Leonard Matters remarked that the plesiosaur, “if it ever existed, appears to have ned to pares unknown. ”

Though little known elsewhere, the Naheulito is something of a cryptozoological celebrity in South America. This mysterious inhabitant of one of the world’s most beautiful lakes is still being seen frequently.

Jacques Barloy has written of sightings from the 1970s, and John Kirk’s In the Domain of the Lake Monsters (1998) cites several reports from the 1990s.

SOURCE:

The Encyclopedia of Loch Monsters,Sasquatch, Chupacabras, and Other Authentic Mysteries of Nature
Written by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark – Copyright 1999 Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark