Creature record / 1910
About 1910. George Garret was sailing to windward up an inlet of Nahuel Huapi Lake, in Argentine Patagonia. A quarter of a mile away, something rose from the water. It looked "15 or 20 feet in diameter". It stood "perhaps six feet above the water". Then, after a few minutes, it disappeared. Garret's account reached print in the Toronto Globe in 1922, at the height of Argentina's plesiosaur craze. It is often called the first sighting of Nahuelito. Yet the witness himself has never been documented. And nobody has explained the twelve-year gap.
Nahuel Huapi Lake lies on the border of Río Negro and Neuquén, in Argentine Patagonia. Today its monster has a name. Nahuelito. But the first known sighting came from a man almost nobody can trace. His name was George Garret, sometimes spelled Garrett. The sources describe him as a man employed by a company near the lake, or as the manager of a company that sailed it. One summary simply calls him an Englishman.