Sunday November 24. San Vicente.

Written by Jack van Ommen on November 24th, 2013

I went to mass to day at the small church in San Vicente. The gospel was about the last hours of Jesus: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” During communion a CD played in English: “How Great Thou art!”  This is one of my favorite hymns and I could not help myself and sang it along. After mass Pierre a Breton local resident took me to the coffee in the parish hall and I was complimented on my accompaniment. The padre is just a few months younger. He told me that he used to be the unofficial chaplain to the American hippies in the sixties, mostly rich kids who dodged the Vietnam draft on their way to Katmandu.

Yesterday Beatrice drove me back to San Carlos to pick up my bike and then wrote it back to Cala Vicente. I met Geoffrey Lee an Australian who came here 35 years ago, a Flamenco dancer at Anita’s bar in San Carlos. This is a well known gathering spot for the ex-pats. He told me that the island where I shipwrecked used to be an important part of the Carthaginian empire, part of the Iberian peninsula. And that Hannibal (247 B.C.) was born here and that his mother managed to safe him from the human sacrificial offers made at full moon to the Phoenician gods. I have not been able to confirm this, all the internet sources cite Carthage as his birth place. But it is for certain that these islands were important trading posts for the Phoenicians and later their conquerors the Carthaginians. Hannibal was the famous strategist who managed to deal the Romans several important defeats, taking his army and elephants from Spain across the Pyrenees and Alps into the Po Valley.

Coincidence that “Fleetwood” was sacrificed on Tago Mago on November 16th on a full moon night, and I was saved?

One worry has been removed, the one that I might end up footing the bill for removal of the ashes of the sacrifice.

 

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