"Opened in May 2005, the postal outlet on Tanna Island's Mt Yasur is recognised as the only post box in the world on a live volcano. Known as Volcano Post, this follows the famous Underwater Post Office in the second of Vanuatu Post's Xtreme series of unique and innovative postal facilities where official mail is collected, specially postmarked and sent throughout the world. The incredible postal locations enable visitors to mail home memories of Vanuatu's breathtaking sights and adventures. [...] All mail receives a unique Volcano Post cancellation, which will become sought-after items amongst the world's stamp collectors. [...] Imagine showing your friends a postcard from the Volcano Post Box, which was sent to you just a lava rock's throw from molten lava with temperatures over 1000°C!" Between you and me, if they strove to open a post office on a volcano, they could apply the postmarks in a correct way, not randomly and incomplete.
Mount Yasur is an active stratovolcano on Tanna Island, one of the 82 relatively small, and geologically newer islands of volcanic origin which form Vanuatu, an Oceanian island nation situated between Fiji, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. With a height of 361m above sea level, it lies to the southeast of the taller Mount Tukosmera (which was active in the Pleistocene), on the coast, near Sulphur Bay. It has a largely unvegetated pyroclastic cone with a nearly circular summit crater 400 m in diameter. It has been erupting nearly continuously for over 800 years, although it can usually be approached safely. Its eruptions, which often occur several times an hour, are classified as Strombolian or Vulcanian. The glow of the volcano was apparently what attracted Captain James Cook on the first European journey to the island in 1774. Today the mountain is a sacred area for the John Frum cargo cult.
References
Mount Yasur - Wikipedia
Yasur Volcano - Volcano Discovery
Volcano Post - Vanuatu Post official website
Sender: Vanuatu Volcano Post
Sent from Yasur Volcano (Tanna Island / Vanuatu), on 22.10.2014
Photo: John Nicholls
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