A boy who threw a message in a bottle into the Bahamian seas was stunned when it was found on a beach in Portugal exactly one year later.
Amy Bisterzo and her 10-year-old son Lorenzo live in the archipelago’s town of Fort Old Bay, and on February 10th of last year, they decided to conduct a fun experiment.
“Of course when we first threw it we were so excited to imagine what might become of the bottle and where it would go,” Bisterzo told English media back home. “But honestly as time went by we completely forgot about it.”
She admitted that it was a sort-of exciting activity to do with a child, “but in my adult mind I knew it was highly unlikely to be found.”
Lorenzo wrote down his and his mother’s WhatsApp numbers, along with the name of their town and the date, before they took off in a jet ski and hurled it into the glittering ocean.
It travelled over 4,000 miles from Nassau in the Bahamas and reached Vila Chã Beach, near Porto, in Portugal.
There, 49-year-old schoolteacher Maria Enes was walking her dog on February 12th, 2026, when she spotted the bottle amongst a pile of sticks.
She described the moment of finding a message in a bottle as being a “childhood fantasy.”
“As it said 2025 and it was so new I thought it was from the area and I took it home with me. I took the paper with tweezers and I was astonished that it came from the Bahamas— exactly one year had passed.”
“I thought it was awesome and I called the number in the note,” Enes said.
Back in Fort Old Bay, Bisterzo was getting ready to go to bed when a “random” number from Portugal called.
“Then a strange photo popped up with someone saying ‘I got your bottle,'” the mother recounted.
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When Amy realized it was Lorenzo’s writing on the paper in the photo, she immediately unblocked the number.
“I shouted upstairs to Lorenzo ‘someone found our bottle’ because it was so long ago he didn’t know what I was talking about and then I showed him. Then I started to communicate with Maria, and she sent voice notes and videos, and very quickly I realized this woman was so kind and lovely.”
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“I never thought it would be found, let alone almost to the year exactly, let alone go so far and also to be found by the perfect person.”
Maria said she is hoping they can meet her in Vila Chã one day so they can throw a bottle into the ocean together.
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