Lake Lolog - Lake of the Week

 

This week we will take a peek at Lake Lolog (40°01’ S, 71° 26’ W). Its name in Mapuche language means "place with holes" (the word lolog derives from lolo = hole). However, I can't imagine what kind of holes the name refers to.

It is, like most of Argentina's Patagonian lakes, located on the eastern side of the Andes and surrounded by forests. It flows east through the Quilquihue River into the Chimehuin River which in turn drains into the Atlantic via the Limay and Negro rivers.

It has a surface area of 35 km² (13.5 sq.mi.), and its western section is within the Lanin National Park.

Lake Lolog. Photograph by Ciro Calderón Moncayo, From [1]

See its location in this map (it is the lake at the top of the map).

Lolog's lake creatures

In 1960 a local named Sabino Cárdenas reported that “animals appear” in the lake, looking like “a cow [that surfaces]” however, if pursued “it sinks into the lake”.[2] This same creature is described as a "gigantic cow that is sometimes seen swimming in [the lake]".[3]

The "Cuero" lives here too and Folklorist Bertha Kossler-Ilg wrote that it “drags children to the bottom”.[4]

In 1984, Aldo Peletier saw a dark shape in the lake; he believed it to be 8 meters (26 ft.) long (we were unable to find additional sources on this sighting, it may be apocryphal).

Cows are not unknown in the area and even nowadays ox drawn carts can still be seen in some parts of the National Park. Could some ox dragging logs in the days before the Park was created have been mistaken for some kind of wild cow? The photograph below shows how logs were floated in the lake and dragged out of it using ox.

Lake Lolog, Lema family logs. Old photograph. From [5]

Bibliography.

[1] Lake Lolog. El mirador de Cicalmo.
[2] Fernández, C., (1995). Op. Cit. pp. 44.
[3] Rojas, R., (1925). Literatura Argentina: Ensayo filosófico sobre la evolución de la cultura en el plata.. Librería la facultad. pp. 94.
[4] Koessler-Ilg, B., (2000). Op. Cit. pp. 27.
[5] Lucaria. rfAR09, Marcando nothofagus


Copyright 2009-2010 by Austin Whittall ©

Patagonian Monsters Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia