Mactan Getting Mapped in March

Today, March 16, in the year 1521, navigator Magellan, having left the Spanish city of Seville in 1519, had rounded the most southern tip of Latin America, had crossed the Pacific, had lost more than seventy of his crew and a few vessels, got steady Philippine ground under his boots for the first time on the island of Hemonhon near today’s Samar. Meandering his way through the isles in search of a way to the Indonesian spice islands, he got picked up by natives from Limasawa, southern Leyte, and got chaperoned to Cebu where he landed on April 7. In other words: he could have landed on any other island as well. But it was Cebu, where he got killed on April 27, more precisely on Mactan, a spear throw away from the place I’m living now, and where you’ll land if you ever come to this place. We still are a bunch of noisy people, but we don’t throw spears at foreigners anymore. Be our welcomed guest.