29 May 2011, Sunday

Writing from DFW (Arrived from Santiago this morning, now waiting for my connecting flight to ATL)

These are postcards from the Galápagos. They are addressed to recipients in Singapore. There is something special about them. They are not stamped.

At different points in time, Floreana Island was inhabited by early settlers to the Galápagos (there are mysterious stories about some of these settlers too). Whalers were among the people who have used the island in the past. They established some sort of a postal system here.

To mail a letter, one would place the letter in a designated barrel, which is the “post office”. The letter would sit in the barrel until somebody heading to the recipient’s location happened to come along. That person would pick up the letter and deliver it when he reached the destination. In this manner, anyone who passed by the “post office” would check for letters that they could help deliver and leave any letters that they wanted delivered.

Today, visitors to Post Office Bay on Floreana Island carry on this tradition. The people who had sent these postcards deposited them at the “post office”. They probably also took some away with them and would deliver them to their destinations.

Our guide, Eduardo, removing the postcards from the “post office” for us to check if we could help deliver any of them.

Other members of our group brought these two postcards to my attention. They were to be delivered to Singapore. One of them was “mailed” just one day before I was there. Let me be part of this game. I will deliver them by hand when I am in Singapore next month.

I did leave a postcard too. It was also to be sent to an address in Singapore. Let’s see how long it will take for somebody heading this way to come along.