Hope Town - She's a Brick...LightHOUSE!

Hope Town is famous for its well-preserved red and white candy-striped lighthouse. There are so many shallows and reefs around Elbow Cay that, prior to 1864, most of the Hope Town residents made their living by salvaging from the many ill-fated vessels unlucky enough to fall victim to the reefs. There was a great public outcry when residents learned about plans to build a lighthouse, but despite their protests the construction of the lighthouse was completed in 1864. So all the professional "wreckers" and "salvagers" had to find new ways of relieving poor traveling chumps of their money (hence the overpriced beer). The lighthouse is a beautiful and fully-functioning landmark and is also one of only three oil-burning, hand-wound lighthouses in the world. At night, every two hours the lighthouse keeper ascends the spiral staircase inside (101 steps) and must hand-crank the weight on the light to keep it spinning (kind of like winding a grandfather clock -- he winds up a weight that then slowly descends and turns the gears to rotate the light). This morning we climbed the steps to check it out; the works inside were pretty impressive and the views of the harbour were breathtaking. We did find it strange that the interior walls were painted hot pink. I guess when they were done painting the red and white stripes on the outside they just mixed the leftover paint together to do the inside. Waste not, want not.

Last night we had planned on going to Cap'n Jack's since they advertised live music at 9pm on Wednesday nights, but after traipsing all over town all day we were just too tired. We were disappointed because we had wanted to listen to some local music, but from what we could hear we didn't miss out on much. Apparently the advertisement confused "live" music with "loud" music. We're pretty sure that the evening's entertainment was just a stereo system blasting the finest old-school R&B dance hits and hip-hop from the early 1990's. Either that or the band really had it's Will Smith and Sir Mix-a-lot impersonations down pat. I guess if you want to split hairs technically a DJ is "live", right?