Tag Archives: magellan

New photo hosting for Cebu Living photos

Cebu Living will be transferring to a new photo hosting service, Zooomr. The Flickr competitor offers a more generous package for bloggers. Zooomr is set to launch version 2.0 of its site later this week and they’re offering bloggers a free pro account.

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Battle of Mactan: history and myth

There is a spot in Lapu-Lapu City in Mactan island that’s revered by islanders more than any other place. A marker says it was on that site that a man who had sought dominion over the island in the name of the Spanish king had died in the hands of the brave warrior chieftain Lapu-Lapu 485 years ago. (Click on photos to view larger images)

Lapu-Lapu’s deed is fact but it spawned legends about the man–how he defeated the Spanish forces with their powerful artillery (guns, swords, cannons, cross-bows, body armor) and killed their leader Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan–and what became of him.

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Magellan’s Cross

Close to 500 years ago, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan planted a huge Christian cross in Sugbu (now Cebu) to celebrate the baptism into the Roman Catholic religion of island chief Rajah Humabon, his wife, and some 500 of their followers on April 21, 1521.

The 485-year-old cross, called Magellan’s Cross (click on photos to enlarge), now stands at a small chapel located across Cebu City Hall and along Magallanes Street. The street is named after Magellan, Magallanes being the Spanish translation of the Portuguese explorer’s name.

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The beautiful island

Cebu is an island province in the central Philippines composed of six cities and 46 municipalities. It is ringed by over a hundred smaller islands that include popular tourist destinations Mactan, Olango, Bantayan, Camotes, Daanbantayan, and Malapascua.

The province, a narrow strip of land that is 200 kilometers long and 41 kilometers wide, is 588 kilometers away or an hour’s flight from the Philippine capital Manila. Click here for a map of Cebu province.

The capital city–also named Cebu and dubbed the “Queen City of the South”–is the oldest city in the country. In Cebu City is Colon, the oldest street in the country built by the Spaniards during the time of Spanish explorer Miguel Lopez de Legaspi.

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