Lake Coatepeque, El Salvador

after the beautiful sunny day yesterday to welcome the spring, today we have a rather gloomy now, with some heavy rain that has started a while ago...which for sure is not in the favour of my neighbours who have been trying all morning to pump out the water from their flooded backyard as a result of some pipe defect or something...not to mention that the sound of the tank is so 'pleasant', and it is just like 3 metres away from my window *sigh*...

but oh well, i wouldnt let any of it ruin my intention to show you some really cool cards today, where the first one comes from a new country :D You have no idea for how long Ive been wanting to find someone to send me a written and stamped card from El Salvador!! And finally, one landed in my mailbox thanks to Pat! A million thanks to Pat!!

and it is such a lovely card! (probably coz it bears the name of Santa Ana too:))

The beautiful card shows Lake Coatepeque, which is a large crater lake in the east part of the Coatepeque Caldera, formed during a series of major rhyolitic explosive eruptions between about 72,000 and 57,000 years ago.

(on a side note, Santa Ana is a department of El Salvador in the northwest of the country, with the capital of Santa Ana. There is also a volcano bearing that name, so it would be really cool one day to receive it too :)
Unfortunately, I still havent had the chance to see a volcano in real life...I almost did last summer, but with my luck, it was closed for tourists, coz it was THEN that it decided to get a bit active...so one day hopefully :)

and here are the two cool stamps and the interesting oval cancellation, which I've found to be rather typical for most of the South/Central American countries.
The one on the left was issued in 2009, representing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while the other one is from 2008, from a set of two festivals' stamps.

thanks sooooooo much Pat with this great contribution to my collection!!!