delight
Message in a Bottle Discovery on Tasmanian Beach Leads to 25-year Intercontinental Friendship
A bottle tossed off a cruise ship traveled four years to a Tasmanian beach and sparked a 25-year friendship across two continents.
Not exactly news, but a beautiful story comes now from the sandy shores of Tasmania, where 25 years ago, the waves brought a life-long friend to resident Diane Charles.
Rising early, she tells ABC News AU , was her habit back then—to enjoy the peace of the sea and salute other early risers. One such morning in January, Charles discovered something bobbing up and down in the surf.
It was that most famous of curiosities: a bottle, sealed tightly with a message inside.
We’re talking 25 years ago, so when Charles opened it up to find the note written in Spanish, she couldn’t just type it in to Google Translate; and it wasn’t as if there were a big immigrant community in Tasmania either.
The captivating discovery became all the more captivating—because it was a mystery. With the help of her brother who had a Spanish dictionary, she tried to piece together the gist of the letter by picking out individual words, but it was poetic, and they eventually sought a scholar.
“Life has taught me all is possible, receive love and success second to this,” was the literal translation. In the top left corner, however, there was something far more interesting, a name and a fax number.
In 1997, some years before Charles’ fateful discovery on the beach, Erika Boyero from Colombia was bartending aboard a cruise ship sailing around Scandinavia. Oppressed by boredom, she filled several empty alcohol bottles with letters and threw them overboard.
Four years later, one made it to Tasmania, and when Charles sent a letter via fax, Boyero was back at home in Colombia.
“Hey, you received a fax from Australia,” said her father. “I said, ‘What? I don’t know anyone in Australia.'”
Then she remembered the bottles.
MESSAGES IN BOTTLES: Bahama Boy’s Message in a Bottle Floats 4,000 Miles to Be Read Almost Exactly a Year Later in Portugal
“You don’t really think that can happen,” she told ABC News AU. “There are so many millions of people in the world … and when destiny, in this way, shows a person you have to meet in this life, for this reason … it is beautiful.”