Lake Tele, the picturesque round lake said to be home to the legendary Mokèlé-mbèmbé.
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An Apatosaurus, also known as a Brontosaurus, drinking from a lake.
Located amidst one of the least explored areas in our globe, in Epena District, Lake Tele is rumored to be home to the Mokèlé-mbèmbé, Lingala for “one who stops the flow of rivers”, a Brontosaurus-like creature that is the Congo’s answer to the Loch Ness Monster (or his counterpart, Canadian Ogopogo).
Due to the dense tropical swampland surrounding the freshwater lake, the area is extremely hard to explore, with its dangerous animals/insects and impassible terrain as just some of the obstacles that brave visitors of the area have to face.
Located in the north-eastern area of the Republic of the Congo, Lake Tele was formed in Pliocene alluvial sediments by an unknown geological process. It is elliptical, almost round, in shape and is surrounded by the Likouala-aux-Herbes swamp forests which are gradually covering it and, interestingly, there are no significant inlets or outlets in the lake.
The swamp forests around it have not yet been exhaustively explored.
And there is rumored to be also the above mentioned elusive beast lurking in the dense swamp, a mysterious cryptid resembling a long-necked dinosaur widely believed to live in the lake and spotted for hundreds of years by explorers, also described by the native pygmies.
Sometimes described as a living creature, sometimes as a spirit, its escriptions vary widely among those who claim to have seen the creature, but it is often described as a large quadrupedal herbivore with smooth skin, a long neck and a single tooth or horn.
Of course, there has been no verifiable evidence of the creature, but the reports are so widespread and exist over such a long period of time that it has grabbed the imagination of cryptozoologists across the globe, believing that Mokèlé-mbèmbé is a prehistoric survivor of some sort, who hides in Lake Tele and the unnavigable swamps surrounding it.
There is even report of some local pygmies who once killed and ate a Mokèlé-mbèmbé, around 1959!
While it’s unlikely that a similar creature exists in the stagnant, landlocked waters of Lake Tele, it has certainly made its home in the minds of believers and mysteries enthusiasts.
Images from web – Google Research
