Venezuela - The Metro System

Location : Freeport, Texas

I did mention previously that the last trip to Venezuela was a total waste. Well maybe not because I did get one set of stamps there on the Metro rail system. Sadly I'm not really collecting stapms on train, but it does make for interesting collection.

The stamps on top are dealing with the Metro system, a mass rapid transport system in the Capital Caracas and its neighbourhoods. Apparently the Metro system, which was started in 1983, is a source of great pride in the Venezuela, so the next time you are there, you should make a mental note not to pee when you are waiting for your next train.

An excellent source of information on the Caracas Metro system can be found here at Wikipedia. The stamps in question are dealing with the new developements being made on the Caracas metro system. The top stamp is on the new 4th Line that was opened in 2006. The other stamp deals with the " Metro Los Teques", a line started between the main line with the town of Los Teques.

The two stamps below are the stamps on the metro system of the city of Valencia. Now this is a much newer system that came into service only in 2006. As per wiki, they charge only 500 bolivar for an adult, which comes to about 23 US cents. Which makes it irritating to me because the cost of the stamp on the metro costs 3000 bolivars, a cost that would have gotten me 6 round trips on the metro.

Sources : Urban Rail - Valencia , Urban Rail - Caracas ,  Offical website - Caracas Metro , Offical website - Valencia Metro

Italy - Como the silk stamp

Location : The Gulf Of Mexico

Sometimes it is frustrating not to have access to the internet because I want to research a bit into the subject that I want to blog on. This is one of the reasons that I have been holding out on this miniature sheet that I am presenting today.

This is apparently the first (and as far as I can tell - the only) stamp sheet to have come out in pure silk. This sheet, priced at approx 2.8 Euro was released by the Italian post to comemorate the Italian artist and sculptor Baldassare Longoni (1876 - 1956). The picture on the left of the sheet is one of his paintings of the city Como, which is famous for the silk it produces. Please note the side edges that I have left out where you can see the fine silk threads coming out.

That said, the above information is something I have deduced using my non-existent knowledge of Italian, mixed with the help of a few translation sites. So there is much that still needs to be resolved. For example why silk? Does it pay homage to the city or to Longoni, who did something in silk as well.

Also It seems to be particularly tough to get hold of an boigraphy of Mr Longoni to know more about that chap. Web searches only lead to auction houses who ask me if I am a neice of Mr Longoni.

Finally the translation of the back printing leads me to believe that this is actually some sort of an envelope and it is supposed to open up. Very exciting and Indiana Jones like! I think I will leave it a mystrey till someone from you kind readers can translate it and shed some more light on it.

USA - Vintage Black Cinema

Location : Gulf Of Mexico, 26 31 N , 094 17 W

Firstly I am a bit surprised that in this age of extreme political correctness in the US, the USPS came out with a stamp sheet called "Black Cinema". Maybe they thought that "Colored Cinema" might be misleading. :)

Regardless, I was thrilled to get my hands on this sheet. I am an minor Jazz fan and so I was very happy to get my hands on the stamps featuring Duke Ellington and Louis Jordan.

Let me tell you a bit about the stamps.

Remembered as the first screen appearance of Duke Ellington, the 1929 Black and Tan features three songs by Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra. In this 19 minute short movie, Ellington, playing himself, is in danger of having his piano repossessed. When his fatally ill girlfriend dances at a night club, she saves Ellington's music - and asks to hear his "black and Tan fantasy" on her deathbed. So by all accounts, it wasn't a fresh and happy short movie.

I haven't seen the movie myself, and I as an policy don't post you tube videos on my blog. But if you are so inclined, you can get the first five minutes of the movie on youtube at this link.

The other stamp I was keen about was of Louis Jordan. This chap was one of the most colorful person in the Jazz industry and was an accomplished singer, Saxophonist, and a bandleader. He had a band called the tympani five and sang his way into peoples hearts right through the 1930s to the 1950's. An amazing personality, the Caldonia was called a short film simply because in that time, no body had coined the term "music video". This was an 18 minute film featuring four of Jordan's songs.

Links : Official website of Louis Jordan.

Egyptian Immigration

Location : The Cayman Ridge ,  19 38 N 083 36 W

 

Since we have been going through my official papers, let me show you a page from one of the passports. This is the Egyptian immigration at work and for some reason they seem to be using revenue stamps in the temporary visas. I'm not sure if they are still doing that, but I haven't seen too many countries using stamps.

 

Sadly the impressive Eagle cancellation hasn't been done properly and the stamps themselves are upside down to each other. The whole effect onestly doesn't seem too appealing. But then Immigration officials are rarely known for their artistic sensibilities.  

 

Venezuela No 2

Location : Off Jamaica , 17 24 N 080 31 W

In line with the yesterdays fiscal stamp, I wanted to put another one I spotted on the official papers. This one seems to have a value written on it of 0.02 UT, a value I'm not sure what it represents in Big Mac's.

If someone could shed some light on then, it would be greatly appreciated.

Venezuela

Location : Caribbean , 14 45 N , 074 33 W

 

The last few days were busy as I went to Venezuela, but it was sure disappointing. I couldn't get ashore and couldn't get any cards till the very last minute. So sorry folks, but there's not going to be any mail call from Venezuela this time. But I did get a few stamps on the offical mail during this call.

 

Pictured above is an Venezuelan stamp to be used on the offical stamp parers. I think the notation "Timbre Fisical" on the bottom left means "Financial Stamp". Itas a neat thing, but sadly as its part of the offical papers, can't add it to the personal collection. :)

 

 

 

Empire state building - Postal Chute

Location : Atlantic - 24 24 N , 069 28 W

 

It seems ages since I put up a picture of a post box or a post office out here. So I wanted to show you something different today. I had gone to the Empire state building in New york a few days back and they let us up to the observatory on the 86th floor. On the way I came across this chute which is pictured here. The inscription on the metal plate reads " US Mail - Cutler mailing system, Cutler mail chute Co., Rochester, NY USA".

 

I saw it on only one floor, but its a safe assumption that this chute goes all along the height of the the Empire state building. I haven't seen such an system in use anywhere else and I doubt in the new skyrises being made today, postal chutes are fitted anymore. Postal chutes must have been a great godsend in those days for all postal employees.

 

 I heard that once the Empire state building postal chutes shut down and an postal employee had to climb the outside of the building to deliver mail to the top floor. An unfortunate mix up in the new USPS uniform led people to believe that an ape was climbing the Empire State Building. I believe that even made a movie on that!

 

 

U.S - Frank Sinatra

Position : The Atlantic - 38 19 N / 072 07W

 

The last few days were hectic as hell. We were discharging at three ports inside New york , and what with all the inspections and going out and doing stuff, I was plum out of time to post something here. But in all that I did manage to get my foot into the door of the probably the smallest post office in USA. I got a total of three stamps and one sheet out of the trip, which only means that I am going to have to shift to bigger post offices. 

 

The stamp above is of the USPS, an organisation that I'm afraid  will feature more often  here as my ship spendfs a lot more time in this part of the world. So as I was saying, this stamp features Frank Sinatra. Though I never did like the guys music, he was an and remains fabulously liked by a lot of people. Several of his recordings - including 'In the wee small hours' and 'Come fly with me' - are considered classics.

 

I think the only song I liked of his was "Strangers in the night". But honestly if I want to listen to music of that time, I would rather listen to Kid ory or Louis Jordan's Jazz. I'll probably post something on that tomorrow.

 

 

New Links

As I mentioned, I haven't been online much and it seems that a lot more blogs have linked over to me & it is my pleaseure to introduce them here & put up their links as well.

The first blog is called Rainbow Stamp club and other then the name, which I think is a little lame (sorry Ajay & jeevan :) ) , the blog is amazing. The amount of effort these guys put into every post is simply amazing and disconcerting in the way that there really can't be much for a person of the Indian forest office to do! Plus they even publish an Philatelic magazine. Please do check out their blog on the link above and also added to the right with all the other great blogs.

The next to come up is Gulfmann. He has ofcourse been a regular contributor to this blog, but due to an oversight his blogs haven't been here. Sorry for that George. Gulfman has three blogs running on Philatelic issues so I'm only putting up his stamps blog, Gulfmann Stamp Collection . Plus it has some snaps of Post boxes, so I couldn't resist. Keep up the good work George, and oh yes.. put up my link in your blog!

Lastly, though its not a link, I just want to show you all the nice site of europe-stamps, where the author was kind enough to write something nice about me. So thank you for that.

Italy - The winter games

Location : New York - 40 38 N / 074 02 W

Am in new york now and am waiting for the berthing to take place so that I can see what the USPS is up to these days.

Since was busy the last couple of days, am just here to put up a miniature I picked up in Italy about the winter "olimpici" games.

Of all the above games, my personal favourite would have to be the top centre - Figure skating. Simply because all all the beauty, the poise, the elegance ... and of course the short skirts.

Answer to comments

I logged on to the internet after a long time today. Till now I have been blogging only by email so I really didn't keep track of the comments coming in. So let me say thanks to you all for writing in. To questions raised,:
Eric From Jura : Yes buddy. I did indeed get your miniatures. Thanks for them. Sorry for not sending across a card your way from this ship. I'll send something nice from Venezuela.

Yukikoh : Thanks for the comments. Missed you out too. I se you are back in Germany. Double treat your way too.

Lefung : Yes got your stamps. Thanks. Hope you got the cards from Algeria and Gibralter by now.

Thanks to the all the rest who were kind enough to comment.

Australia - Fantasy

Location : The Atlantic - 37 10 N / 049 18 W

To get away from my Geographical location, let us look at a strange stamp
from a land possible the farthest from me at present. The Australian stamp
was give to me by very good friends Rajat & Radhika. I simply can't make out
what this stamp is all about, but it was released back in 2002 and is most
likely about some fantasy characters from an artist or writer. Let me know
if you can shed some light on it. But I like looking at stamps like this and
its an great addition to the collection. So thanks Radhika.

Italy - Thailand joint issue

Location - The Atlantic

Close to the heels of the Thai joint issue with turkey, is this one with
Italy. Though both the pictures have the famous landmarks, the theme doesn't
match. In the last joint issue, at least both the pictures were of places of
worship. I think in this issue, due to the colloseum, the Thais should have
sent a picture of their Kickboxing arena. :)

Turkey - Thani Joint release

Location - The Atlantic

 

I know that some people like Eric from France like to collect joint issues. So today I wanted to show you the set of joint issue released by the turks and the Thais. Featured are soem of the most popular sights of the countries. If you look a few posts back on my regular blog, you can see pictures of the Mosque at Istanbul. The last I had seen the temple in Thailand was when we went there in 2006.

 

I suppose they must have released a miniature sheet on the occasion, but sadly I only got my hands on these individual stamps.

 

 

Turkish Fort

Location : The Atlantic

 

Today since I put up a picture of a turkish fort on my regular blog, I though that I might as well put up a few of my Turkish stamps. I don't think that I have put up any TUrkish stamps here in a little while. This stamp I picked up when I passed through Turkey last time somewhere in Late June.

 

The turks are serious about their flags. Every vantage point is adorned with their huge flags. And this stamp is another good example of that.

 

Algerian football

Location - The Atlantic - 35 47 N /  023 34 W

 

During my last visit to Algeria, along with the FDC of the Algerian national anthem, I also managed to get my hands on this nice miniature. I like it firstly because the stamp is based on football and is thus round. Such things give me inexplicable pleasure. A fact I'm wary of investigating too deeply incase the pleasure stops.

 

Also the black & white picture and the green tint gives it a very nice flavor. The stamp seems to be commemorating the fifty years of the creation of the Football team of Algeria. I don't follow the game much, so am not too sure how good their team is now, but they sure did seem a happy bunch back in 1958. :)

 

Is it only me or are most of the Algerian stamps of a nationalistic theme?

Gibralter - Bonelli's Eagle

Location - Atlantic Ocean   

 

The day before I was refueling at Gibralter. Gibralter has an amazing collection of miniature sheets if you look it up on the net. But as I reached late at night on a midnigh, the only stamp I could source out there through the agent was this one of the Eagle. Stamp is obviously from a series of stamps "The birds of the rock". The adjoining literature says the following about these birds:

 

" Bonelli's Eagle ( Hieraaetus fasciatus) - Formerly resident in Gibralter, it still breeds in Spain and young birds are sometimes seen on the rock. It bred here untill the early 20th century, its disappearance probably a result of the disturbance caused during the construction of the runway. A lack of hunting ground in Gibralter and nearby Spain makes the return of this species unlikely. Bonelli's Eagles are a charecteristic species of the rugged country such as the cliffs and crags around the Mediterranean. It also breeds in Africa and across asia all the way to Indonesia. "

 

About the stamp itself, the painting is beautiful, except that the Eagle seems to be dozing off to sleep. In the background we can see the Rock of Gibralter as seen from the south and on the top right corner, you can see the Spanish coast behind the rock.

 

For a better view of the rock, please check out my regular bog (link on the right) where pictures of the area are posted.

 

Cheers all !!  Post cards & covers sent out to the same bunh of people as from Algeria, so not posting your names again. Let me know once you get them.

 

 

Algeria - Anthem

Location - Approaches to Gibralter / 36 09 N / 004 33 W

We left Algeria the day before and now are on the way to the US via the
Gibralter straits. Sadly Algeria doesn't allow seamen shore leave so
couldn't set foot on the land. But the trip wasn't a total waste because
atleast the agent was able to get me some post cards and miniatures.

As a bonus, I even got one first day cover. This one pictured above is the
FDC comemorating the national anthem of Algeria, I don't suppose you can
make out the stamp in much detail, but this stamp, released in 2008, has the
Algerian flag and the whole of the national Anthem (Hymne - as it calls it)
written across it. I'm not sure what 1er Jour D'Emission, but maybe Eric or
some other kind soul can explain that to us.

But all said, this is a beautiful piece to add to my collection.

Cheers all!

covers sent to the following from Algeria :
France - Eric
Russia - Alexander

Cards sent to the following from Algeria :
France - Mr Cotard
Portugal - Mr Almeida
Canada - Glenn (sent two your way)
Thailand - Charlie
Malaysia - Lefung
Taiwan - Wu
China - Mr Zhou fan
UK - Brett
Germany - Kalpana
Czech Rep - Lenka

Hope you all get them and sorry for all the others I missed out. Do put in a
comment if you want to be added to the mailing list.

Rats from Canada

Location - Algeria

In sequence to the rat stamps sent out to me by Eric, is this sheet sent to
by Glenn Moores from Canada. Glenn has a great blog running at
gemsworldpostcards.blogspot.com where he is trying to have a collection of
postcards from all corners of the world.

This miniature is an amazing piece of art. There are etchings in the stamps
that don't come out on the scan, but the thing is breathtaking. Which is why
this senseless cancellation is all the more befuddling. The fact that a
postal worker would put his rubber stamp on something like this is sad.

But all the same, thanks for this sheet glenn. Have sent across a couple of
cards youtr way from Algeria. Hopr you get them.

Cheers all!

French Rats

Location - At Anchor, Algeria

Since I showed a stamps I recieved, I might as well show you a few more I
got. This one is from a great guy in France , Eric Bruth. His link is on the
Left, and you can get to him at my-philately.blogspot.com . This is one of
the stamps released by France on the occasion of the year of the rat. Please
also note the cancellation done here, which I find more beautiful then the
stamp itself. :)

Thanks Eric. Once more for all the stamps. Have sent you something from here
in Algeria. Hope you get it.

The bridge from China

Location : Off the Sardegna Island, Mediterranean

Since I put up a post about the bridges at Istanbul on my regular blog, I
wanted to put up a stamp with a bridge here. So I am showing you a beautiful
stamp sent by Mr Zhou fan from China. A person who keeps sending me stamps
inspite of my irregular replies.

To him and my other friends all over the world, I am deeply grateful and
apologetic.

The stamp in question is undoubtably beautiful and is of a set of six stamps
issued by the Chinese govt featuring the Summer palace, in much the same
style. The set includes three bridges, two buildings and a boat house (which
as I understand is the "clear and peaceful boat").

Thanks again Mr Zhou.

Italy - The Scouts

Posn - East Coast Sardegna - 40 30 N / 10 38 E

The institution of Scouts completed a hundred years of its existence in the
year 2007 and everyone other then the Indian govt seems to have issued reams
of stamps to commemorate the occasion. Pictured above is one of the sheets
released by the Italians for the occasion. I am putting this here simply
because so many people have been asking for Scouts stamps on the internet
bulletin boards, that I am sure that I am missing out on their significance.

I actually was in the scouts. I distinctly remember wearing my brothers
hand-me-downs to the parades. The only thing I took to those parades, which
was my own, was this round ferrule type thing through which we knot the
scarf and a fierce will not to parade.

And that is what we did in the scouts, I swear. We paraded, saluted that
three fingered salute and read some rules off some blue book. Which was
immediately taken back as soon as the parade was finished.

Of course the stamps prove that some scouts play the guitar around the
campfire and do canoeing, but I assure you that the only thing remotely like
that in my two years with the scouts was to move some stones near a hill.
And I don't like hills and I didn't like those stones.

The Map

Posn : South East of Sicily - 36 18 N 018 11 E

First off, please forgive me for the long absense off the blog. I wish I
could say that it was for a good reason like global hunger, but I was
actually busy killing friends and strangers on the Team Fortress servers.
After a moth or so of that, I find myself again in the safe sanity of
bobbing along in the middle of the sea. This time in the middle of the
Lagoon - Something the US Navy calls the Mediterian. I don't particularly
like the Medi. Too crowded for my taste and some of the worst weathers that
I have faced in my seafaring life has been in these waters.

But hey new waters translate into new stamps don't they? I had gone to the
beautiful Italian city of Trieste and actually stepped out to visit the
International Maritime Institute to have a look-see, but it turns out that
the place shut down few months back. Just my luck. Someone who knows someone
tells me that there was some scandal. Money taking and all that. But don't
tell anyone.

Anyway, Not to make it a total loss, I went over to the charming post office
in the city centre where they have a really nice postal museum, with
postmarks from as far back as the 1800. Pretty neat stuff.

I got this sheet from there. I love maps of any kind and one of the
bemnifits of sailing at sea is that you are sorrounded by charts, some of
them really old. In my last ship, I came across a chart of New Zaeland,
where the credit for the plotting was given to Captain Cook.

So I'm pleased as a plum to present this map sheet. It seems to tell us the
path from the cities of L'aquila to Foggia and probably the name of the
route is "tratturo Magno. The route obviously passes through mountains and
we see in the stamp a mountain range with sheep in the fore ground. A
beautiful stamp sheet.

75 Years of the Indian Airforce.

Its only so long that I will be able to use to excuse of setting things in order before starting to post more regularly. :)

And it is time I put up some more stamps of India. I have written earlier about the Philatelic account I have with India Post and so on coming back, I was surrounded with the stamps released by India over the past five months.

One of the neat sheets I got was this one released on the Platinum Jubilee (1932 - 2007) of the Indian Air Force.

The Indian Air Force was officially established on 8 October 1932. But by the time they actually got around to flying their planes it was 1st April 1933. So it's probably apt that I got the 75 years of the Air force in 2008! The IAF inetially compromised of six RAF-trained officers and 19 Havai Sepoys (air soldiers) and four Wapiti Airplanes. The Wapiti is thus aptly pictured on the main sheet on the lower left.

The others featured on the main sheet from top Left are the Dhruv, the AWACS and an IL 78 refuelling two Su-30 airplanes.

The neat thing about this sheet, is that on either sides of the sheet, are the pictures of the planes that have accompanied the IAF in this 75 years journey. The planes on the left side from top to bottom are: The Toofani , Mi 26 Helicopter (The biggest Helicopter in the world) , Gnat, Packet (C 119), Hunter and the Jaguar.

On the Right from top to bottom are: Dakota DC-3, Mig 21, AN 32, Mirage 2000, Vampire 52 and finally the Mig 25 (Foxbat).

A very comprehensive history of the IAF can be found here on the IAF website.

As you can see the FDC released on the occasion is a stunner as well. When taken with the previous released stamps and FDCs of the humble Gnat, 16 Sqn of the Air force and the sheet released on the 100 years of Man's first flight, the sheet finds itself in good company.

New links

Over the last few months I have been mailing to a lot of new friends and today I added two of their links on the left out here.

The first is Glenn from canada who has a nice blog about postcards. He is trying to collect cards from all over.

Secondly I have put a link to Zhou fan's blog. He is a new friend from China and has been sending me covers from that country on a regular basis.

Thanks to the both of you!

In case I have missed out links of any of you, please do write in and I'll put it up.

Tintin

I don't think its ever going to be possible to show all the mail that has come in during my absence, but I'll try to put a few of them over the next few days. Today I'm showing this amazing cover and sheet sent to me by Kalpana from Germany. I had posted the sole Tintin stamp on my blog earlier and Kalpana had offered to send across the sheet. I collect comic stamps and am a huge fan of Tintin, so I was thrilled to receive this.

Cotard and Eric also sent me the sheet in mint condition (Thanks to the two of them) but enclosed in the cover was the sheet of Tintin comic covers that I didn't even know was out. It is an amazing sheet and I am eternally grateful to Kalpana for this.

Tintin is one of the most recognisable figure in all fiction and since his first arrival in 1929, he has sold more then half a million comics in more then fifty languages. It seems improbable that most of Tintins travels were conceived by an armchair traveller in the early 1900's when media was so restricted. It wasn't before the "Tintin and the Picaros" (1976) that Herge actually went to some of the places he showed us all a long time before that. The last stamp in the series of the comic cover is of the comic called "Tintin and alpha Art" - A story that herge couldn't finish before he passed away in March 1983.

Personally I haven't been able to read the first three comics as of now. Something I plan to correct very soon.

Thanks again Kalpana. :)

Paquebot mail

Paquebot Letters posted in Dakar & Lome

As the last post said, I am back from the trip at sea. It was pretty eventful trip by all means and we throughly enjoyed it. But on the Postal front, it was an exciting time. I was able to visit a lot of post offices in foreign lands and posted to a lot of people from obscure spots on the globe.

One of the things I am happiest about is the use of the Paquebot mail that I tried for the first time. I had written extensively about the use of Paquebot mail before I left for the ship and let us do a slight recap of the concept before we go any further.

The ship is considered as part of the country of the place that it is registered in. So technically letter's posted on the ship are considered as posted in that particular country and hence are legally accepted as proper means of postage as long as the vessel hands them to the port post office on the first port of arrival.

The beauty of the Paquebot mail is that the cancellation of the stamps is done by the country through which the letter is posted. This would normally never happen. In the picture above you can see two of the Paquebot mails that i posted to myself. The top one is posted in Dakar (Senegal) and the bottom one was posted in Lome (Togo).

Paquebot canceled at Panama

A bit about the envelopes themselves. On the top of the envelope is the marking with the "Paquebot Mail - Posted at high seas" By all accounts I could have written this by hand as well, but this gave a better look, so dad sent it across to me on the ship.

The stamp on the left top is the stamp of the ship and this ship was the M.T Maroni, registered in the port of Willemstad in Netherland Antilles (This is why the stamps are from Netherland Antilles). The notations below the name refer to the GRT (Gross Registered Tonnage), NRT (Net Registered Tonnage), DWT (Deadweight) and the BHP (Power of the vessels Engine).

And finally the stamp on the bottom right is the stamp of the vessels captain. As per Paquebot regualtions the letter has to be signed and stamped by either the ships captain or the purser.

I did try to send these mails from pretty much every post that I went to, and surprisingly the mail reached from most of the places. The best were the African countries of Senegal and Togo, where they were decent enough to put nice cancellations and send it across. A month late, but still in one piece!Paquebot canceled in Corpus Christi, USA

Panama topped the list of countries that requires to put some money into making new postmarks. You can see why by the picture posted up there. I had heard that posting Paquebot through the US would be a pain, but surprisingly the only mail that I posted from Corpus christi, Texas did reach in good order and I was surprised to see that they even put a hand-stamped postmark and not one of their usual machine made ones.

Some of the other chaps who were nice enough to put the Paquebot on their blogs were Eric from the My Philately Blog, and again Eric from Jura. Thanks to the both of them for the nice write ups along with the pictures. George from Taiwan had also put up the pictures on his blog but I can't seem to open his page right now.

Thanks to you all!

Back Home !

Hi All.

As the title says, I am back home. The last few months were great and I did cover a huge chunk of the globe in those months. But the time was very hectic and it feels great to be back home and wind down for a while.

Firstly, it was simply amazing to come back home and see the pile of letters that you folks have been sending over to my address for the last few months. I loved all of them and thanks a ton for them. It will take me a few days to deal with them and I will be putting up a lot of them on the blog over the next few days.

Anyway, thanks again to all of you & I want to let you know that I'm open for swaps again of Indian stamps.

Cheers all!

Togo - Sir Edmund Hillary

Location : Off Yucatan - 17 08 N, 081 36 W

News reached a little late on the ship, but I came to know about the passing of Hillary yesterday. I had put up a couple of stamps on the 50 years of the climbing of the Everest many months back on this page.

This stamp is part of a bigger miniature released by Togo on the occasion of the mellinium. There are apparently ten of such sheets, based on the ten decades of the century. This stamp is part of the sheet on the fifties. I would have liked to use this stamp for a better occasion. Probably the 75th year and not for the passing of that man.

Chile - Santa

Location : The Carribs - 13 55 N, 079 40 W

Things were crazy in Panama this call and I'm sorry but all got out was one paquebot. But I did send some out from Nicaragua and I hope you do get them soon. The thing with posting the mail from the ship is that you hand over your mail to relative strangers and simply trust that it will reach the other end. Its a wonder any of those reach at all. :)

With this nice warm feeing in the air, I'll leave you with a set of X mas stamps released by the Chilean postal Dept. This is one cool santa. I'm still not sure what exactly he is doing with Rudolf "the red nosed deer", but it certainly can't be what I think he is doing!!

Curacoa - Dive

Location : Panama City Anchorage - 08 50 N, 079 29 W

I haven't been around for some days and the reason for that is that I am getting off the ship and this will be pretty much one of the last posts before I get back. Thanks to you all for the comments and the wishes.

Wanted to put up a stamp from the underwater. It is a rare stamp in the sense that even though many stamps are released featuring underwater scenes, rarely do we see divers being featured in them.

Hopefully will be able to get some diving done in Honduras before I get on the plane back home.

Neth Ant Cartoon

Location : Pacific , Nicaragua coast - 09 41 N, 086 22 W

We are reaching port in the morning and as things were a little tight, I was wondering if I'd let you good fellows do the talking. I picked up this cartoon strip in Curacao, & I wonder if any of you could figure out what it stands for? Is this a famous cartoon character in Netherland? Looks like a spider to me.

Chile - The Easter Islands

Location - Pacific, Equador Coast 00 24 S, 083 08 W

The Easter Islands, though seperated from the Clilean mailland by a huge distance, have become much of an icon for the country. The reasons of course is the presence of the statues on the Island. No one really knows who or why built these statues, but
the small wooden statues being made on the bottom right are made for money and sell for as much as 2 US dollars each on the road side.

Martin, a friend from Chile says that there are teo main types of statues - one with bigger ears then the others. He said that the statues were built by warring tribes who fought each other till everyone died and the only ones who were left behind were
the gods with no one to pray to them and some to buy them for two bucks.

PS: As you can see from the position, am crossing the equator again in a couple of hours!

Chile - Sea Lions

Location : Pacific, Peru Coast - 07 59 S, 080 49 W

Chile claims a sizeable chunk of the Antartic Continent as a part of its Territory. I am not really sure how this goes down internationally because as far as my understanding went, the whole of the Antartic was supposed to be an international territory.
Regardless, the Antartic does impose a potent influence on the whole country simply because of the cold water current that flows from it up the Chilean coast. This also brings along the visitors from down under such as Penguins and Sea lions.

I did see a bunch of these Sea Lions perched on a rock off Vina Del Mar. Picture on the regular blog.

A point of interest is that even though the Chilean currency is denoted as dollars, it is actually called "Peso". This stamp of 1500 Peso's costs approximately 3.5 dollars or 130 Indian Rupees. Sometimes I think India is the cheapest Philatelic
destination in the world.

Chile - Two Nudes

Location - Pacific, The Peru Coast - 11 01 S, 079 45 W

One of the good things about moving around a city during a bright sunny day is that you can always go into the post office. The post offices in Chile are called "Correos De Chile" and are very difficult to find, simply because they are hidden in
Shopping malls.

I did get some nice stamps and sheets there and I thought that I might as well start off with this beautiful painting by Henritte Petit. I put it up here because fine art always has fascinated me. The fact that there are naked chicks on the stamps had nothing to do with it. At all.

Fruits

Location - Chile Coast - 21 39 S, 075 57 W

Well its been a hectic past week and we were in chile for the day of the new year and a few days hence. It was a beautiful port stay and I'm just about getting over it now. Apologies for not coming by earlier and updating this with more posts.

Thanks for the wishes from you people and I have put in some mail from the port. Will make a post call tomorrow. In the meanwhile, thanks for checking in and the comments. Am putting up a set of stamps released by the Neth Ant, on fruits. I think its always good to start off something like the new year with food on your plate. :)