COVER N.162 - GIBRALTAR

Postmark: Royal Gibraltar Post Office Main Office 25.AUG.2022 
Posted on 25th August; received on the 9th September 2022
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I've wrote here of how I was surprised by a cover from Eric coming from the Faroe Islands, after I got another one from him from Albania; well, he continues to surprise me, this time with a beautiful cover, full of exciting goodies, from the only the place I know that has a traffic light on the shoulder of the airport runway....the Rock that guards the straight, the only place in  Europe with wild monkeys: Gibraltar. 

Thank you so much, Eric. I truly appreciated it. The more so since I can now tick another box in the list of stamp emitting countries and territories. 

Gibraltar is one of those places that makes you wonder... not only for the seemingly eternal geopolitical issues that gravitate around the rocky promontory, which in the wake of Brexit will at some point rekindle,  but also because  of its geonatural uniqueness, of which the celebrated monkeys or the fact that it is one of the world's hot spots for birdwatchers, due to its startegic location as an open air auditorium to watch the great bird migrations between Africa and Europe, are probably the most famous features.

Gibraltar is also the place, I found, where machines work for themselves:  I've been to the rock many years ago, when my girls were still pre-teens.Marta, the youngest of the two,  was passing by a Coca-cola vending machine and for some reason patted it. Maybe because the machine recognised her as a gentle and kind soul, maybe because someone had forgotten to hit the button after dropping the coin in, maybe (as I firmly believe) because, as in  the Moody Blues Album title "Every good boy - or girl, I add - deserves favour - the machine  responded to Marta’s act of affection with some internal noises that caught our attention and lo and behold.... on the retrieving drawer an ice cold can of Cola suddenly materialised.

The irony of it was that Marta didn't like Coca-Cola, but it was the middle of August, hot as hell, so the remaining three of us were very happy to share this gift from....above?  😀

Stamps, left to right:

On  14SEP2013, Gibraltar Post issued a six stamp set, all with a face value of 42 pence,  dedicated to endangered animal species.

On my cover we can see two of these stamps, featuring the Chinese Alligator (Alligator sinensis)....

With a distribution that is today restricted to the province of Anhui, as well as possibly the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang, in China, the species is classified by the IUCN as critically endangered, its population in the wild numbering some 300 individuals as of 2017.

... and the Leatherback Turtle (Dermochelys coriacea), 

This amazing creature is distributed along all the oceans of the world which it constantly roams through. I once witnessed  just etched little leatherbacks and loggerheads (Caretta caretta) being taken by the bucketful at night, as close to the sea line as possible to enhance their chances of survival, on a beach in the Yucatan peninsula, in Mexico. I was allowed to take one of the leatherbacks out of the bucket and take it myself to lay it on the sand and watch the little thing as she paddled her way through the sand into the water. Survival rate is very low, only 1 in 1,000 reaches adulthood, but who knows, she might be swimming across the ocean, as I type...

the last stamp on the cover is part of the 1983 EUROPA issue, themed on Inventions. Gibraltar, on 21MAY1983, issued two stamps (16p and 19p) the lower value one, on my cover, depicting St. George's Wall, a complex of caverns excavated on the rock to serve as bunkers for coastal defence batteries, and the 19p stamp, illustrated with the water catchments created on the rock face to capture rainwater since there is no phreatic or any other source of inland water on the promontory.