This postcard, sent from Maracaibo to Germany, is postmarked June 24, 1908. It translates from German as follows:

“Dear Ms Buchwald! I send you kind greetings from a long distance. I would have enjoyed telling you farewell, however you weren't present.

“It is very nice in Maracaibo, only very warm. Hopefully you feel quite good and also my loves. I intend to stay here for 2 years. Again yours sincerely, your Anna Pabst.”

Below these two postcard images you'll find another one. The scene in this postcard, in color this time, is taken from almost exactly the same spot, but this time reportedly in the 1920's. Doesn't look like much has changed except for a new streetlight and what appear to be telephone poles, so the street appears to have been electrified & perhaps “telephonized” in the interim between the two postcard photos.

This section is not just limited to images from Maracaibo, and this is a good example of that. All of them were taken in the 1920's.

Of these four (4) great panoramic photos, three (3) of them are of the La Salina camp. Two (2) show great views of some of the camp housing and the 3rd shows a photo of the pipe storage yard that was located there.

The 4th photo is a fabulous open-water port view of Maracaibo. Smoke from the stacks of the old coal-burning ships in movement are clearly visible as are a few sailed fishing boats as well.

I aquired these from a dealer. The enlargments you get when you click on them are full-sized at high resolution to allow you to see the images in greater detail.

Steve Sleightholm, being more familiar with the La Salina area than I am, has reviewed the photos & provided the descriptions.

These photos of Christ Church were taken by my father in early 1977. Even at that time, changes within the city were visible as witnessed by the tall high-rises around the church that appeared even then. I realize that this is called “progress”, but it's a bit of a shame the way the surroundings mar the original outline of the church against the horizon from the way it used to appear.

But the church still retains it's appealing & attractive lines. Four palm trees (of the six originally planted when the church was first built in the 1930's) on the property parallel to the street were still there back in the late '70's.

It would be nice to see how the church and the propety look today.

The real reason I wanted to post these photos, however, is because they show the interior of the church. I spent many hours in this church as we went to services every Sunday “sin falta”. At one time I was even an acolyte, and my father was the volunteer treasurer of the church for a number of years. We used to stay later by about an hour or so every Sunday after services had ended while my father tallied the day's offering.

I had always remembered the church as being larger, but I suppose that's a common phenomenon of memory. And I had forgotten about the image in the stained glass window in the front of the church behind the altar until I saw these photos again. It had been so familiar to me back then after spending so many hours looking at it during the sermons.

This is another postcard that shows the Hotel del Lago, taken in 1962. This was the hotel as I pretty much knew it when I lived in Maracaibo, before the pool was moved & the multi-story addition was added.

Below the postcard is the original full-color, uncropped brochure page photo from which the black-and-white postcard was taken.

The pool was considerably smaller than it is now, but it was always nicely maintained. They always had a great Sunday morning buffet brunch laid out in the open-air area under the large striped awning. We used to go there after church, stop at Sweeney's bookstore where my parents would get the Sunday Miami Herald & I'd pick up a copy of the latest MAD Magazine or other magazine. Usually we'd then go home, but often we'd go to the buffet, eat all the great food (and in those years, never gain weight!) and spend the rest of the day by the pool. I'd swim in the pool or even sometimes go down & swim in the lake - it wasn't polluted then as it is now. It was a wonderful place to spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

Over the years, I've received numerous Powerpoint presentations through E-Mail that consist of numerous old vintage photo slideshows of Venezuela. Many of these are of the city of Caracas, but are interesting in that many of them show the city during progressive, more stable, and perhaps happier times, when Caracas was growing by leaps & bounds and construction was everywhere, fueled by petrolem revenues - times when Caracas and Venezuela were full of hope for the future. Others show photos of buildings that were new when the photo was taken but have since aged & have been torn down. Some show construction of the highways before they became over-crowded. And others just show interesting photos of the past.

There's at least one presentation that shows Venezuela as a whole, without a city focus, but the shots are beautiful indeed.

Those without Powerpoint can't view these presentations unless they were saved with the viewer built-in (and most weren't). Since buying Powerpoint isn't cheap if you don't already own it, I've converted them all to FLASH presentations so that they can be viewed with the Macromedia FLASH viewer that's available for free and can be downloaded as a browser plug-in. The conversions come with player controls along the bottom of each presentation which allows one to stop any photo at will for a closer view and then continue on with the automatic slideshow, or it even allows for manual progression instead of automatic progression through the slideshow if one prefers.

In any event, all of them have historical value, and so I'm presenting them here, all in one place. Please be patient to allow them time to load, particularly on slower connections.

These postcards are of the La Salina area and were part of a group of postcards I recently acquired. There was only one other postcard included in the group, and it's not shown here. This postcard was of the original EBV school building, and it's shown in the Doug Becker Historical Section (the 2nd photo).

Judging from that one EBV building postcard that was included in the group, the fact that the EBV building is marked with the name of the school and knowing the approximate age of the similar photo shown above it, and assuming that all postcards were acquired roughly during the same time period, I'd estimate the age of these postcards to have been produced sometime in the mid-to-late 1940's.

It's interesting to note that the backs of each postcard were printed in English rather than Spanish. I believe some conclusions can be made based on this curiosity. They're only guesses, of course, but my assumptions about these postcards are as follows:

View of edge of camp at La Salina & oil well.	View of the Lake in foreground & La Salina camp with oil wells in the background.	La Salina Club with dance floor area, clubhouse, & club restaurant.
View of La Salina pool.	Another angle view of the La Salina pool.	La Salina Clinic

Port view of La Salina with oil well platforms, loading/unloading area & tanker.	Sunset view of oil wells - Cabimas.

“Postcard album” envelope in which the postcards were kept. It's (very) slightly larger in size than the postcards that were kept in it. Opposite side had “La Salina” lighlty handwritten on it.	The backs of every postcard looked like this. Brown edges, which are glued on, are probably remnants of the way these photos were once attached in an album.

A caimán placed on a fountain wall at Plaza Bolívar.

This is a photo that was recently discovered by Oster Bayne (see below for more information about Oster) that came from his father's collection. Taken in 1950, it's an aerial shot of the Maracaibo harbor with the CREOLE Marine Offices and jetty in the foreground at about the 4 to 5 o'clock position, and the city in the background.

It's one of those historically priceless photographs that has survived over half a century, and has fortunately been preserved by Oster's father to now be shared here by all of us.