From Loch Ness to the Congo, there are plenty of places left to seek out your very own primeval predator. From Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2009.
Scotland
Cryptozoology's poster monster, Nessie is the long-necked lake beast lurking in Loch Ness. Loch Ness' massive volume — the lake is 37km long, with a maximum depth of 230m — leaves lots of hiding space for an elusive cryptid. All the better for Nessie's neighbours, profiting from the multimillion-pound industry she has spawned. The big question: could she be a plesiosaur, the otherwise extinct aquatic reptile?
African Congo Basin
The Likouala swamp is hot, humid and thick with forests and wetlands. Where better for reptilian survivors of the Jurassic to remain undocumented? So it is with the mokele-mbembe, a Lingala name that refers to hypothetical but oft-reported prehistoric wildlife (such as emela-ntouka, mbielu-mbielu-mbielu and nguma-monene) all fitting the description of a sauropod dinosaur — elephant-sized, with a long neck and long tail.
Amazon rainforest
The planet's most likely cache of undetected large mammals is the Amazon rainforest. Hidden therein could be countless beasts, including the tapire-iauara, or
onça d'água (water jaguar). Cow-sized and donkey-legged, it is said to have the face of a jaguar with drooping ears. The remote swamps it inhabits suit its semi-aquatic needs and carnivorous nature, and keep it away from the mapinguari, a legendary sloth-like Big Foot of the Amazon, and the minhocão, a scaly, black giant-worm bugaboo up to 20m long.
Pacific Northwest, North America
Sasquatch, from
sesquac, a Coast Salish Indian word meaning "wild man", is just one of many Native American terms to describe our favourite, but unverified, large, hairy, bipedal primate — Big Foot. This secretive, nocturnal cryptid who refuses to sit for a portrait has seriously challenged both sceptics and proponents. Although believed to be present all across North America, its frequent appearances in the extensive forests of Washington state and British Columbia draw the curious from around the globe.
East Africa
The Nandi people of forested western Kenya have a beast they call kerit, aka the Nandi bear. As large as a lion, like a hyena on steroids, with high and broad front shoulders, thick dark-brown fur and the gait and face of a bear, it is said to be ferocious, and craves human blood. Having eluded capture through centuries of sightings, it must also be smart; after all, according to the Nandi, its favourite food is brains.
From Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2009 — 850 trends, destinations, journeys & experiences for the year ahead.
The Himalayas
Although tamed by Tintin, Scooby-Doo and Hermey the Elf (from
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer), the "real" abominable snowman has yet to be substantiated. With many sightings registered and footprints photographed, the yeti appears to be alive and well, though still only on the desolate snowbound slopes of the high Himalayas. If chased by a yeti, why not turn your pet nyalmo (a 5m-tall, four-toed primate-like Himalayan cryptid) on him, or summon up a Tibetan mystical tulpa energy being?
Mongolia
Something elongated, reddish and deadly may lurk beneath the sunbaked rocky plain of the southern Gobi Desert. Known to the local Mongolian tribesmen as the
allghoi khorkhoi ("intestine worm"; it looks like living cow entrails), cryptozoologists call it the Mongolian death worm. The thick-bodied invertebrate is said to emerge after rain in June and July, spitting lethal acid from its front end and emitting an immobilising electric charge from its tail.
Indonesia
Sleepless nights may be routine for children of Seram Island in the Moluccas archipelago of eastern Indonesia. Folklore and several contemporary run-ins tell of nocturnal winged monkeys that abduct and feed on young flesh. The fearsome orang-bati (winged men) supposedly dwell in a cave network deep within Mt Kairatu, a dormant volcano. Its human-like torso, complete with blood-red skin, bat wings and a long tail, is covered with short black fur; its shrill wail is naked terror.
Australia
Australia is known for its unusual fauna of monotremes (egg-laying mammals) and marsupials (pouched mammals) with uncommon names (quoll, quokka, numbat), and also for the unfortunate extinction of the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger). Are there really none left? Maybe not. Maybe too there's still a thylacoleo (Queensland tiger), conjectured to be the marsupial equivalent of a predatory feline. Or the fabled bunyip — could there be a surviving prehistoric diprotodon?
Oceans of the World
What's actually out there in the liquid unknown covering 71 percent of the planet's surface and accounting for 80 percent of living things? Lots, including the oft-spied cadborosaurus sea serpent, the most famous of which is Caddy of British Columbia; or the giant monsters of the deep such as Kraken and Lusca (octopus-like sea beasts); megalodon (shark); biblical leviathan (whale); or any of the globsters (unidentifiable organic mass washed up on a beach).
This is an edited extract from Lonely Planet's Best in Travel 2009 © Lonely Planet Publications, 2008. $34.95.
Have you heard of any other amazing creatures that are supposed to be hiding out somewhere?
