Champion Trees of South Africa

The Champion Tree Project of the South African Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is the only one of its kind on the African continent. Each year a panel of experts evaluates trees nominated by the public according to strict criteria - age, size, historical significance.












We saw the Giant Yellowwood in Knysna Forest and a champion Baobab in Limpopo.

And we also visited one of the most famous of the many trees of historic importance in South Africa, the "Post Office Tree" of Mossel Bay.

A sprawling milkwood (Sideroxylon ineme), it covers a half an acre of land! The story goes that in 1501, a letter of the Portugese explorer Pedro Cabral was found in an old shoe at this tree by the crew of a visiting ship, in which he recounted the loss of Bartholomew Dias and his ship at sea.

There is a  post office box erected at the base of the tree and you can post letters ...

 or a postcard using a special commemorative stamp.

We did!

I am sure I will receive this postcard a lot sooner than the one I "posted" at Post Office Bay on Floreana Island in the Galapagos. There you leave your letters and postcards in one of the wooden mailboxes. Historically, the mail was picked up by  passing ships who posted them when they reached an inhabited port.

Nowadays, eco-tourists visiting the Galapagos are encouraged to pick up letters and postcards addressed to a place in your home country or some other country you might be visiting in the next year and post them when you get there. I picked up some postcards to mail in the United States and some for Vince to mail in Switzerland where he had an apartment at the time. I also picked up some addressed to France and Germany since we would be spending part of the Christmas holiday there that year. And of course, I left behind a postcard addressed to myself at home in NJ.

I did receive my Galapagos postcard eventually and still have it in storage with my trip scrapbook. A little more reliable than a message in a bottle.