Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Intramuros, Fort Santiago and Erotic Progeny

The Spanish colonized The Philippines in the sixteenth century, leaving in 1895 to be replaced by the Americans, who in their turn departed in 1945.

Intramuros is the old central Spanish colonial quarter of Manila. It’s located at the intersection of Manila Bay and the Pasig River, and, as its name suggests, it is a walled city within the city. And Fort Santiago was the barracks within this quarter for the Spanish military garrison. The area was heavily bombed and mostly destroyed during World War Two by the Americans, though, for obvious reasons, the official version till recently had it as the Japanese. Intramuros is subject to on-going restored.

The entrance, suitably labeled:

The old Spanish residential quarter, still bustling with activity:

C16 stone stairs leading to the fortified walls:

The lichen-covered fortified walls:

Colonial buildings above the moat:

View out over the moat:

Fig calmly strangling the walls:

Mother cat and her brood, meditating round midday:

Calesa (carriage) in a torrential downpour:

Ornate doorway, with the Spanish royal coat of arms:

A quiet nook:

Greenery invading the walls:

The ruined army barracks:

Another cat, the Attendant of Ruined Walls:

A munitions building:

View out across the Pasig River:

Nice knobbly bamboo:

Bougainvillea:

A reward for hard tourist work:

Now, these guys are the progeny of some very bad and corrupt colonial administrators:

And these, the descendants of some sympathetic and reform-minded Spanish soldiers:

Can you distinguish between these two groups of after-bears?

Of course not - a triumph for the Behaviourist agenda!