A bottle that journeyed for nearly two years and three thousand miles has forged a cultural bond between Spanish and Bermudian schoolchildren.

Bermuda High School students were elated last week to receive a package from their contemporaries in the city of Pontevedra, in northern Spain.

It all began in a watery twist of fate, when a bottle with a message from children at the Julia Becerra Malvar Barrantes School washed ashore in Bermuda and was discovered last May.

With guidance from teachers Mary Field and Jan MacDonald, BHS students eagerly took on the challenge of translating the message. They then created a package of Bermudian paraphernalia, including post cards, drawings and a class photo.

They sent the parcel off to Spain and waited hopefully for a response.

It turns out that the children at Barrantes School, now in the sixth grade, were thrilled to receive word that the bottle and letter they had cast into the sea had finally been recovered.

The story was snapped up by Pontevedra's local radio and the newspaper, El Faro de Viga, which ran colour photographs of the BHS students. Mary Field said: ''Apparently this was the talk of the town for two days!'' The Spanish children penned an enthusiastic response to their Bermudian counterparts, which arrived on the Island on Tuesday. They wove imaginative tales about the bottle's lonely voyage across the Atlantic and vividly described their Wine Festival and local customs and dress.

Both Spanish and Bermudian children are keen to maintain a correspondence -- although perhaps in the future by e-mail, not bottle.