I thought it was a fallen tree at first, we'd seen a lot of them on our way up the mountain pass. The river could barely flow in places for all the debris thrown about by last night's storm so I didn't think much of it and didn't realise that it was following us until we reached the bridge to the next mountain and saw something impossibly long crawling upstream.
It looked like a wooden turtle in all honesty, like one of those alligator snapping turtles you see online only its head must have been bigger than our car. The rest of its body was obscured but serpentine and the wake it left behind seemed to go beyond the riverbend.
We thought we'd be safe to drive by it, given how high up we were and how slowly it was moving but as soon as we made to turn left back onto the road it jerked its head towards us and began to ascend. We turned right instead, damn near turning right off the edge of the road in our haste to just get away and sped off, hoping to find a more inland road even though the map showed none.
I kept my eyes glued to the right and the rear view mirrors, watching it follow us, still ascending and still remaining at a safeish distance from us. Worst case scenario we debated making a break for the trees and trying to outclimb it - something of that size couldn't possibly hold its weight up out of the water for much longer.
She spotted it first, the small road leading further inland. I didn't want to trust a road that wasn't on any map but our options were too limited to argue so we turned left and prayed we'd find a village we could hide in. The trees smothering us on either side suggested that nobody had come this way for quite some time.
Perhaps the creature got to them too and we were just the next in a long line of unfortunates who'd dared to go near its river. Perhaps we'd find people who knew how to deal with it and could help us get out safely. Perhaps it wouldn't follow us any more and we'd end up halfway down a highway, still on track to get home.
The sight if its head peering over the ledge and crawling onto the road behind us dashed all our hope.
It looked like a wooden turtle in all honesty, like one of those alligator snapping turtles you see online only its head must have been bigger than our car. The rest of its body was obscured but serpentine and the wake it left behind seemed to go beyond the riverbend.
We thought we'd be safe to drive by it, given how high up we were and how slowly it was moving but as soon as we made to turn left back onto the road it jerked its head towards us and began to ascend. We turned right instead, damn near turning right off the edge of the road in our haste to just get away and sped off, hoping to find a more inland road even though the map showed none.
I kept my eyes glued to the right and the rear view mirrors, watching it follow us, still ascending and still remaining at a safeish distance from us. Worst case scenario we debated making a break for the trees and trying to outclimb it - something of that size couldn't possibly hold its weight up out of the water for much longer.
She spotted it first, the small road leading further inland. I didn't want to trust a road that wasn't on any map but our options were too limited to argue so we turned left and prayed we'd find a village we could hide in. The trees smothering us on either side suggested that nobody had come this way for quite some time.
Perhaps the creature got to them too and we were just the next in a long line of unfortunates who'd dared to go near its river. Perhaps we'd find people who knew how to deal with it and could help us get out safely. Perhaps it wouldn't follow us any more and we'd end up halfway down a highway, still on track to get home.
The sight if its head peering over the ledge and crawling onto the road behind us dashed all our hope.
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