For a very long time, Latin America–apart from Mexico–was the weakest link in the website. We had dipped our corporate toe in the water and obtained a few cards from French Guiana but that didn’t compensate for having nothing from Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, or anywhere else. Well, we’re fixing that now.

Thanks to Luiz, a former customer turned friend in Brazil, his fixation on stadium postcards led to a complicated spider-web arrangement involving postcards, refrigerator magnets from China and Russia, souvenir glass 3D views from Hong Kong and Indonesia, and ultimately piles and piles of terrific old postcards from just about everywhere except Guyana and Suriname. You might ask: what do refrigerator magnets have to do with this? Simple: we could get them, he wanted them, and he had what we wanted.

Wait just a minute. Not simple at all. Try mailing anything to Brazil. Anything at all, registered or not, insured or not. Good luck to you! Some of those magnets have travelled farther in their short lives than we have, and isn’t it funny how Hongkong Post, which is normally so efficient and honest, disavows itself entirely of anything that happens even when the parcels are insured. “It’s not our fault.” “It’s their Customs office.” “It’s the weather.” Whatever.

If you look in our Brazil category, you’ll see more stadiums than we ever knew existed. If you look in Argentina, we could say the same thing about Av. 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires, apparently the world’s widest avenue still, and with as many postcards of it as there are of the Statue of Liberty or the Tower of London. By the way, the photo for this Blog entry is of that road.

There will be lots more South American cards going in, as fast as we can process them. Watch this space …

And on a separate note, those technical gremlins are still alive and well. There is no way to make this long story short, so we won’t try, but for awhile if you have a Yahoo or Outlook or Hotmail address you might not be getting the periodic announcements about new entries. All the more reason to check back here from time to time for all the news that’s fit to print.

Bye for now.