Caribbean Lighthouses

This past month, I've been traveling - two weeks on the HAL Maasdam, three days before and 10 days after. It was a Jazzsea cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale. About 2/3rds of the people on the cruise were jazz people - either fans, or players. There were four professional jazz bands on the cruise with them. I booked the cruise before I knew that it was a Jazzsea cruise so it was a nice surprise. I booked it because there were three islands that I had not visited before. (St. Barths, Grenada, and Bonaire)

One of my interests other than lighthouses is cemeteries, and that was the forefront of what I planned for the various ports. Although I got a new camera last year - a Canon, and I also got a long lens, I didn't take many lighthouse photos on this cruise. I didn't even look up the lighthouses until I got home.

But I did get some, almost by accident.

Going down we were on I-95 and didn't look for lighthouses. The itinerary was as follows
St. Thomas
St. Barths
St. Lucia
Barbados
Grenada
Bonaire
Curacao
Bahamas private island

In St. Thomas, we got a cab and visited 8 cemeteries, two Moravian, a Jewish, a Danish, Western, Eastern, Coki and Hoffman. We took 360 photos of gravestones, but no lighthouses.

St. Barths - the tour of interest was $68 each for a hour cab ride with no narrative (they speak French there and don't speak much English). So I figured that it would be better to rent a car for the day which was 50 Euros, and then we could do what we wanted. The first problem was we were late getting in to St. Barths - the water was VERY rough and the captain moved the boat at least once. He kept telling us that we shouldn't go ashore that we should stay on the boat.

We were supposed to meet the car rental person a 8:30. We had breakfast in the buffet just because we wanted to be ready at 8:30, and we went down to get our tender tickets. But they kept us waiting for a hour while they took the tours first. Finally got to shore at 9:30 and found no car person. I tried to phone and the phone said the number wasn't valid. So I went over and talked to the guys in the kiosk including a guy who drove up in a red Chevy Spark (the kind of car we were to have) from Avis. They phoned the airport office of
Turbe for me and said the lady would be back in 10 minutes. And she was.

We went over the car an located all the dents and then got the car and started off. The map had very little detail and only some vague name (no street names) but I knew that two of the cemeteries that I wanted to find were in Lorient, and one was near the public beach and one was across from the airport. Two of them I couldn't find where they might be on the map at all. Since we had to turn the car in at the airport, I decided the airport one would be last. So we started out for the public beach which was north of town.

Problem. The road to the north turned into one way south. So we bumbled around in town (very narrow, crowded and potholed streets) and finally found a road which was going the direction we wanted, except it went straight up. This was where we saw the Gustavia lighthouse





- it was up on the hill above us.It is an active lighthouse - a round conical tower painted white with a single red band at the top. The lantern has been removed and is on display at the Musée Municipal de St.-Barthélemy in Gustavia. It isn't an old lighthouse - it was built in 1961 on the site of an old fort.







I took these photos while Bob was driving up and down the mountains, dodging trash trucks and other drivers who knew where they were going, and coming to a circle and going out in various directions - deciding we were going the wrong way and then come back and trying another direction. Bob grumbling all the time. And these are the only ones I have of it. I did not know that we could have gone up to the fort for a really nice view of the harbor.

We took photos in one of the cemeteries that I could find - about 150 out of 300 we took in this port.

St. Lucia - we had been to St. Lucia before, but Bob hadn't gotten off the boat. So this time we had a tour called Island Splendor Drive. Our first stop was a house on top of a hill called St. Marks. That was my first sight of the



Vigie Light, Castries



I did a little better here - at first I thought this was a different lighthouse because I didn't see all the antennas

But in this picture you can see that I'm just on the other side of the lighthouse and all the other things are still there



After we came back from the tour, the ship moved from Castries over to Soufriere and I got this photo from the deck



but I don't know if it is a lighthouse or something else.



After St. Lucia, we went to Barbados and we did the Harrison's cave tour and didn't see any lighthouses.

In Grenada we did the Mountain Rainforest tour so we were mostly out of town seeing a spice factory and Grand Etang Lake. We ended up in Fort Frederick. When I looked up the lighthouses I saw that there was a St. George's Harbor Light on Fort George and I think I may have gotten a photo of it from the ship as we left at dinner time. (It is a little square thing sticking up from the fort wall)

In Bonaire I was determined to snorkel although Bob had just had a melanoma removed from his shoulder and it wasn't healed enough to go. But I had missed snorkeling in Australia because I got the flu and was too sick to go. So I rode my scooter along the coast to the place where I had booked a non-ship tour. We went out to Klein Bonaire and I saw what looked like a lighthouse. I had a snorkeling camera, but it isn't so good out of the water and at a distance, so I asked the professional photographer if he would take a photo for me, and he refused.

This was the photo I got



After looking at all the lighthouse photos from Bonaire, I have concluded that this is a fake lighthouse - Harbour Village Lighthouse - which is not an ATON.

This camera is much better underwater







While I was snorkeling, Bob went and took photos in a couple of cemeteries. When I got back to the ship, I took the scooter around the deck and took photos of the Fort Oranje lighthouse






Fort Oranje was built in 1639 to defend Bonaire's main harbor. The commander of the island lived here until 1837 when his new home was built next door. The fort never saw action. The cannons are old English cannons that date between 1808 and 1812. A wooden lighthouse was built around 1868, and replaced by a stone structure in 1932. It is an active lighthouse with a white flash every 2 s. a square tapered-pyramidal stone tower. The light station now serves as the harbor master's office.

We wanted to go to a lighthouse in Curacao, but the taxi dispatcher told me that it would be $80 each way and $40 an hour waiting, and that only one of the lighthouses was accessible by road. And I thought that was too expensive, so instead we went to the old Jewish cemetery by the refinery, and the newer Jewish cemetery and a Catholic cemetery and took photos.

Very cool Rosalie! I really like that last lighthouse, its very different. I enjoying snorkeling too...even have my own optical snorkel mask. (otherwise I wouldn't be able to see much)Happy traveling !

My granddaughter and I are on a Disney cruise - we went to Costa Maya where I've never been before. We saw the Majahual lighthouse (through the cracked windshield of the van we were riding in).

As always GREAT photos and interesting commentary! Thanks for sharing!
Rick

Rosalie, your photos and the lighthouses that you visit are always unique and ones that I probably will never see...I enjoy your posts very much...I agree with Rick...

DITTO

Thank you

The difficulty with the trips I do is that I don't usually have time to set up any kind of shot - I'm always taking the photo from the deck of a ship or from in a taxi.

After we were in Costa Maya we went to Cozumel



This thing which I always wonder about is not an ATON - it is tower is at Hotel Cozumel Marina near the airport



This is old Punta Langosta lighthouse barely visible above building on left

This is the new lighthouse (Punta Eelitita) built in 2000 to replace Punta Langosta



from the cruise ship dock



from inside a taxi going south



from inside a different taxi going south. There was a sign on it at the bottom but I didn't get a photo of it.

Love all your trips and your commentary. I will never see these lighthouses so I am glad to have the chance to see them vicariously... :-)

Thanks so much!
Carol

This lighthouse isn't in the Caribbean, but I finally got a photo of the



Cape Canaveral Lighthouse



The ship (Disney Fantasy) left the port during daylight hours.