cos | Even crazier mail routing

Nine years ago, I mailed a package to Florida that got routed through Nashua NH but then got bounced back and forth between Boston and Nashua four times in a row. But now I've got one that goes much farther both in the WTF factor and actual distance.

On a dive trip to St Lucia in February I forgot to bring REEF survey sheets - underwater paper with lists of the commonly seen fish in the region, that you can mark with pencil without worrying about it getting wet. It makes it much much easier to do fish surveys, since you don't have to wait until you're back and fully dry to write things down. Found an active REEF member who lived in St Lucia and she met us at a local grocery store and gave me her underwater slate and stack of surveys - since she was about to move to Bonaire. I promised I'd buy new ones for her once she got her new address.

In March she arrived in Bonaire, gave me her address, and I ordered new survey sheets and slate from REEF to be shipped to her in Bonaire.

REEF is in the Florida Keys, and Bonaire is in the south of the Caribbean sea. But since Bonaire is a municipality of The Netherlands, the package went from Key Largo to Miami FL to The Netherlands; I guess there's no direct mail routing from the US to Dutch Caribbean islands, so they all have to go through the mainland.

About a month after leaving Key Largo, the little package cleared customs at The Hague. Ten days later, it arrived... in Auckland, New Zeland.

As of earlier this week, last I checked, it was still in Auckland, nearly 4 weeks after it got there. Even weirder, its tracking status as "out for delivery". I imagine a delivery truck from New Zealand trying to drive to an apartment building in Bonaire.

After the recipient alerted us to this New Zealand nuttiness a few weeks ago, and some emails back and forth with REEF staffers, it seems one of them is actually going to Bonaire in person in July. She's just going to bring some surveys and a slate with her, to give to the woman who gave me hers in February.

In the meantime, I wonder if this package will ever get there, and where else it will go on its way? USPS package tracking link

Edit: 5 days after I posted this, tracking was updated to show it went to customs for the Dutch Caribbean on May 29th.

Edit 2: She received it on July 3rd!