COVER N.61 - Chile

Postmark: Concepción - Centroain 24-11-21
Posted on the 24th November; received on the 10th January
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What a lovely cover with such great stamps and the opportunity to add another country to my philatelic atlas, the first one in Southern America....Chile, the land of the great Luis Sepúlveda of "Patagonia Express" and "The Old man who read loved stories" fame... Thank you so much Jindřich!  

Patagonia... I wish I had gone there... it has been on my list of "maybe one day.." for such a long time not only for the sheer undaunted beauty of it (by the way, I'd love to have a cover circulated from Cape Horn....) but also for the creatures that are the subject of the fantastic souvenir sheet Jindřich used on the cover: Penguins, and in particular King penguins, the ones in the stamps, with their lovely white and black overalls with posh yellow edging... what a show-off..!

King penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) at 70-100 cm tall are the second largest of the penguin species, the biggest being the emperor (makes perfect sense this monarchical hierarchy).

According to Wikipedia, these beautiful creatures' habitats are located between the  45 and 55°S parallels, so one really has to go down to the south tip of the American continent to be able to get a look at them. We've all seen photographs and films of penguin colonies, and it never ceases to amaze me how the hell fathers find their children upon returning from the sea with their bellies full of food to feed them, amidst the thousands of lookalikes...conversely, the images of baby penguins waiting for their parents, alone on the ice while the icy wind blows and predators wait for an opportunity are disturbing and I’m sure that many a nail has been bitten while David Attenborough told the tale and the images unfolded on TV....😄

The terrific souvenir sheet dedicated to the Chilean Antarctic  featuring two stamps with images of King Penguins was issued on 09SEP1996. The 250 Pesos stamp shows an adult couple with one of the happy pair  accommodating an egg under its body for hatching (another fantastic image that I'm sure everyone has seen  is that of penguins hatching their eggs, totally exposed to the elements); the 300 Pesos stamps shows the result to be expected some 55 days after the egg ahs been laid: a juvenile penguin with its brownish plumage.

The 370 Pesos stamp with the image of the Viejito Pascuero (Santa Claus) on Twitter or some other social media network was the Chilean Christmas issue for 2020, issued in December of that year (couldn't find the exact day).