Innocent Tourists Get the Scare Of a Lifetime

A tour gone wrong

The story begins with a group of tourists. These tourists were dead set on doing one thing: relaxing. In order to properly rest and reenergize, everyone involved was lounging out by the river.

Now, the river isn’t exactly the kind of place you go to watch either people or animals. In fact, it’s the kind of place people are normally talking about when they say they want to get away from it all. However, these tourists soon encountered what appeared to be a mysterious creature. And getting to the bottom of this particular mystery meant taking their adventure in a very exciting and unexpected new direction.

An unexpected mystery

Just what did these tourists see? That’s actually the question all of them had when they first turned their eyes to the object in the water. There was a creepy shape looming under the surface, and everyone instantly became focused on figuring out what it was.

Some of the people in the tour group were a bit more familiar with rivers and river creatures than others. But part of what made this all so scary is that even the river veterans didn’t know what this thing was. It had a size and shape that seemed to defy description or identification. Increasingly, the tourists found their gaze completely transfixed by this lurking creature.

Eventually, curiosity got the best of everyone and they decided to find out just what it was that was hidden under the surface of the water.

Finding the courage to explore the mystery

You’ve probably heard the phrase “there’s strength in numbers.” That phrase was quite true for the tourists trying to figure out what breed of river monster they had on their hands. If they were by themselves, any one of these tourists might have stayed far, far away from the intimidating creature. Collectively, though, the group drew strength from one another and decided to get the answers they were seeking.

Once everyone marshaled their courage to investigate (that took a few minutes, as you might imagine), they decided to cut to the chase by approaching the dark shape in the water. They took one step closer to the river at a time, eventually getting close enough to identify what they were looking at. When they got the answer, though, it was something that nobody in the group could have predicted.

The shocking answer to the mystery

By the time the tourists got close enough to the river to identify the shape, most of them assumed it was a creature of some sort. Alive or dead, they were betting on finding an animal in the water. Given the strange shape and how easily the whole thing scared them, what else could it be?

The shocking answer to that question is “a work of art.” It turns out that this was a sculpture that had been giving everyone a fright for so long. It didn’t look like a traditional sculpture, though, instead blending into the deep background all around. In a way, this is a compliment to the unknown artists: the sculpture’s lifeline features and natural coloration made it blend perfectly into the river and surrounding area.

An unforgettable adventure

You might think that the tourists felt a bit silly after finding out that they were frightened by a sculpture rather than a scary critter on the river. That’s not really the case, though, because most of them ended up taking a more philosophical view of the event.

What was that view, exactly? Basically, one of the core reasons that tourists visit places like the river is because they want to have interesting experiences for themselves and to have great stories to bring back home with them. Sculpture or critter, it’s fair to say these tourists experienced something none of them will ever forget!

A lesson for all of us

Accepting that this was an epic adventure in its own right is a kind of lesson these tourists learned. Believe it or not, though, there’s also a lesson in here for those of you simply reading about this event on your phone.

It’s not a very original lesson, but it all comes back to something your parents and teachers told you growing up: “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Had these tourists accepted that the shape was some scary creature, they might have run away, ruining their good time and robbing them of a wacky adventure. Because they decided to see for themselves what the shape was all about, each tourist now has a great story they’ll be telling for the rest of their lives.