Galapagos cruise postcard tradition that led me to a stranger’s door

Sailors have been taking part in the ritual for 232 years. Now, we’re part of that legacy.

I’m standing on Floreana Island in the Galápagos next to a ramshackle box with a peekaboo-door that resembles a cuckoo clock.

But this is no birdhouse; the archipelago’s blue-footed boobies, winged albatross and magnificent frigate birds are nesting in the rocks and bushes when we visit, and even their giant cotton puffs of white, fluffy chicks are too much bird for this compact cubby.

Inside are hundreds of postcards stacked up, etched with personal notes to people living as far away as the Yukon, the US and New Zealand. This makeshift comms HQ in the aptly named Post Office Bay has been in use since 1793 when whalers began dropping off letters to their loved ones in the hope that they would be picked up by passing ships heading in the that direction and hand-delivered.

Remarkably, the ritual is still alive some 232 years later. I’m on a seven-day itinerary on eight-cabin micro-ship Beluga with World Expeditions, and my parents have joined me for this bucket-list adventure. A few days earlier, our guide Darwin had informed us it was our last chance to buy postcards, so we stocked up.

This is not an exclusive experience to our cruise, of course, most travellers passing through the Galápagos stop into Post Office Bay to collect postcards from fellow travellers and drop off their own. It’s not unique to expedition cruising, either, with a similar experience offered at the Penguin Post Office at the British base of Port Lockroy in Antarctica. Those postcards are collected by a visiting expedition ship, delivered to the Falklands then put on a plane before entering the postal system in the UK.

I’m on a seven-day itinerary on eight-cabin micro-ship Beluga with World Expeditions, and my parents have joined me for this bucket-list adventure.

We rifle through postcards sporting Galápagos land iguanas and fur seals, and to our delight find three addressed to people who live within a 30-minute drive of our home in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

We tuck them under our arms, and at the same time deposit a couple of postcards into the box, including one that’s addressed to ourselves. In the excitement, we sign off with a generous reward: “Whoever delivers this will be greeted with a bottle of Champagne.”

Fast-forward a few months; we’re home and we have a yum-cha booking in Chatswood – it’s the perfect opportunity to complete our mission to hand-deliver the postcards. Sadly, the first and second recipients are not home, so we leave them in the letterbox. Sigh.

We deposit a couple of postcards into the box, including one that’s addressed to ourselves. Picture: Jenny Hewett.

We get a hit with the second delivery in Artarmon. There’s a car in the driveway and a bike outside. I feel slightly nervous as we knock on the door. A friendly woman with a fabulous tuft of short grey curly hair appears. We ask if David lives here, and she hesitates, before saying “yes”. We tell her we’ve come to deliver a postcard for him from the Galápagos. It takes a moment for her to register. “My goodness! That’s lovely, thank you – come in, I can’t believe that!”

We enter their home as her husband is walking up the stairs fresh from a bike ride. They stand before us veering between disbelief and glee. During our five-minute chat, we work out that we sailed roughly on the same dates on different ships and must have picked up their postcard just days after they left it.

“This is a delight,” says David. And off we go, never to see them again, but with the knowledge that we made their day. Our high lasts all afternoon. We may never receive our postcard from the Galápagos, but if we do there will be Champagne at the ready.

Originally published as Galapagos cruise postcard tradition that led me to a stranger’s door