Portugal 2011: Another Bones Chapel

Here we go again: I've made a post about this topic some time ago, but this year it was a different chapel.

It is the bones chapel in Alcantarilha .

Again, the walls of the chapel are covered in human bones and skulls. This time they didn't do it with victims of the plague but with "normal" dead. And the story goes like this:

About 300 years ago the local cemtery was simply full, so it was decided to dig up the dead and take them to Faro, the next big city in this area. However, the residents were against that and they protested and wanted their dead nearby. So they collected the bones and glued them to the chapel wall.

Info at the entrance

Detail

Heavy-Metal-Cover-Designer's wet dream...

Even beaches can be cemeteries....

Since the weather was stormy and windy we decided to pay the southwest coast of Portugal a visit. The promise of dramatic landscape and really big waves crashing on the shore was more inviting than hanging around and being gloom about the weater. Some geocaching was thrown in as well...

At this beach i found something odd though: Lying in the sand there was a strange heart-shaped object which i've never seen before. I was, to be brutally honest, a bit baffled by this. Because this wasn't a lifebelt (or at least not a normal one for a normal passenger...)

Why heartshaped? Why all these strange spikes and fittings around it?

My stepmother provided the anwer: This is a funeral wreath from a sea burial. The spikes are remains of the flowers, the iron fittings held them together.

Detail

I guess the urn itself was ripped off by the sea  (was it attached to the rope?).