Today my postcrossing buddy Duncan Alexander and I drove for two hours to get to the South African National Post Office Tree which is a national monument in Mossel Bay. In 1488 when Bartolomeu Dias from Portugal founded Mossel Bay, they believed that according to tradition, they had to attach a message to a shoe and tie to a tree. The message then would get back to their country…
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Wow, they didn’t make it easy for your to post your mail!
Thanks for sharing this fun anecdote with us.
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Very interesting, thank you!
I love to see photos of people preparing, writing and mailing proper snailmail! 
From what I understand, each piece of mail postrd there gets the Mossel Bay tree postmark
This is very interesting!
Throwback to the time when the blog posted about this tree:
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Side note: today I learnt that snail mail is a retronym; it was just called mail before the invention of email
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Fascinating! 
Thanks for the fun fact!
I think I remember the German term “Schneckenpost” (
) from my childhood though (and I am old!). 
But maybe I am so old already, that I remember things that weren’t really there. 
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Very interesting and thanks for sharing.
All the very best.
The German word “Schneckenpost” is indeed old and was used already in the 19th century (and probably earlier).
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I’m so glad I am not demented (yet)! 
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