Pinchaque Sightings
2 documented sightings across Andean páramo of Colombia and Ecuador.
Andean slopes near Cartago, Valle del Cauca, Colombia
British naval officer Captain Charles Stuart Cochrane documented encounters with what locals described as large unknown quadrupeds in the Colombian Andes near Cartago, just below the snow line. He described them as 'carnivorous elephants' and later investigators Harold T. Wilkins and Jaroslav Mareš recorded that Cochrane claimed to have observed the animals himself. The accounts were collected the same year Roulin was documenting pinchaque sightings further south.
Source: Charles Stuart Cochrane, 'Journal of a Residence and Travels in Colombia During the Years 1823 and 1824' (1825)
Cordillera Central near Popayán, Cauca, Colombia
Zoologist François Désiré Roulin collected extensive testimony from residents of Popayán who were 'firmly convinced that a very large quadruped existed in the mountains.' Multiple informants described an animal they called the pinchaque — meaning specter or ghost in the local Cauca language — as living in the high eastern mountains. Size estimates ranged from horse-sized to enormous, with all accounts describing the same general form.
Source: François Désiré Roulin, 'Mémoires sur quelques animaux de la Colombie' (1829); https://cryptidarchives.fandom.com/wiki/Pinchaque