Playing post office
I unlocked the door to my condo, turned on the light and there they were: a couple of blue-footed boobies staring up at me.
These goofy-looking seabirds graced the front of a postcard I'd sent to myself about three weeks earlier -- April 3 -- from the Galapagos Islands.
(Scott Stewart/Sun-Times)
PHOTO GALLERY
Galapagos Islands
Here's the cool part: The postcard didn't have a stamp.
Some stranger visiting the Galapagos had picked up this piece of mail, taken it home to Chicago, found his or her way into my locked, 51-unit condo building, took the elevator up to the fourth floor and slid said card under my door.
Pretty impressive, huh? Especially in a city where paid postal employees can't seem to master this skill, even when there's postage affixed.
This unorthodox mail delivery system started in 1793 in a place that's come to be known as Post Office Bay on the beautiful -- and bizarre -- Galapagos island of Floreana. I say bizarre because this is where a real-life Gilligan's-Island-Gone-Wrong-type episode happened in the 1930s among some eccentric Europeans living on this volcanic patch of land. Suffice to say a bat-crackers baroness and her lover disappeared, never to be seen again, and her other lover washed up dead on a different island. But that's another story.
As for my postcard, I owe at least partial thanks to a man named Hathaway, who reportedly set up a wooden barrel there in the late 18th century so whalers could drop off packages and letters they wanted sent home. Sailors on passing ships would check the barrel for mail addressed to people living near them and deliver it themselves. The original barrel is long gone, but tourists carry on the tradition to this day.
Myself and 14 others on a Galapagos Islands cruise arrived at Post Office Bay early one evening as the sun was being swallowed by the Pacific.
We'd taken a couple of inflatable motor boats to a desolate, sandy beach. Baby black-tipped sharks swam in the shallows as we hopped off our so-called "panga" boats, postcards clutched in our hands.
One of our guides, Socrates Tomala, led us about 50 yards ashore behind some brush, where we found the weathered barrel. It looked like an oversized birdhouse, covered in chipped paint, stickers and graffiti. Tomala opened the barrel's little door and pulled out three large Ziploc bags stuffed with mail.
"The system does work," Tomala assured us, opening one of the bags and handing out stacks of stampless mail to the group.
As the mosquitoes feasted on our forearms, we flipped through envelope after envelope, postcard after postcard, calling out cities, states and countries in hopes of finding a match.
"Connecticut? San Diego?" one of us asked.
"London?" someone shouted. "Norway?"
I heard "Urbana," but took a pass. That's a long drive. But I had to bite when I heard, "Naperville, Illinois?"
The Naperville-bound postcard was dated March 30. A person named Maddy had written it to her friend Izzy. In it, Maddy briefly explained the barrel mail system, warned her friend it might take a very, very long time for this to arrive -- and mentioned the poisonous sea snake she'd spotted from the deck of her boat.
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night would keep me from delivering Maddy's missive. Turns out none of that mattered, since it was a sunny day when I pulled up to Izzy's house in Naperville's downtown historic district and rang the doorbell. No answer.
I left the postcard in her mailbox along with my business card and a note asking her to call me. She did.
"I didn't even know this kind of mail existed," Izzy Gore said. Izzy, 11, is a fifth-grader at Ellsworth Elementary School in Naperville. Turns out so is Maddy, her best friend.
I gave Maddy a ring, too.
"I thought maybe it would take a couple of years" for the postcard to be delivered, said Maddy, who was in the Galapagos over spring break on a family vacation celebrating her grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary.
"Those islands are awesome," she added. "Best vacation ever."
While Maddy's postcard was the only one I took from Post Office Bay, I left three behind. My parents and sister are still waiting for some geographically suitable good samaritan to show up on their doorsteps.
Out of curiosity, I mailed myself another postcard when I was in the Galapagos. This one was put in a regular mailbox, with the requisite 80-cent stamp.
It finally arrived May 16 -- almost a month after the blue-footed boobies. From now on, I might leave the postage off all my mail.