Views of Hope Town
Our dinghy - commandeered!
(center back)
(center back)
Wednesday May 14
Yesterday we made a hop north and anchored just south of Hope Town. I was there 50 years ago as a child and would love to see it again. These days it is billed as a must see stop for visitors but I imagine all those years ago it was just beginning to establish itself as a get-away destination. We towed the dinghy for the first time and managed to get it full of sea water due to the very choppy, though shallow, waters.
Hope Town itself is a delight. The red and white striped lighthouse is home to the only remaining manned lighthouse in the Bahamas. The lodge I stayed at all those years ago has expanded into a lovely resort with fine snorkelling on the Atlantic side. The homes in the town, many of them rental cottages, are painted in pastel colours of every shade all of them looking as though the job was just done yesterday. Small gardens trail glowing boughs of bougainvillea, have oleander hedges and hibiscus bushes. There are blooms everyway, many of them new to me. Vehicles aren't allowed in the center of town making walking a pleasure. There are a few stores; a grocery, liquor store, some gift shops. One of the town's founders (1785) was Wyannie Malone, a Loyalist widow, who moved here to start a new life and there is a museum in town in a building similar to her original home.
Happily there is still a healthy local community on the island too as the many school children testify. We passed a uniformed group of young ones leaving school led by their teacher all singing rousing Christian hymns as they filed along the road on their way home. Later we found our dinghy had been commandeered by a group of excited young school boys who must have thought that anything that old and battered looking had to have been abandoned for them to find. We were cross-examined about the viability of the outboard before we were able to claim it back.
Since we arrived in Little Harbour we have been noticing plumes of smoke, and here in HopeTown we can see red glows at night coming from the mainland. It seems Abaco is suffering several out of control fires. They don't have the resources to combat anything of this magnitude and are having to basically let the fires burn themselves out.
Yesterday we made a hop north and anchored just south of Hope Town. I was there 50 years ago as a child and would love to see it again. These days it is billed as a must see stop for visitors but I imagine all those years ago it was just beginning to establish itself as a get-away destination. We towed the dinghy for the first time and managed to get it full of sea water due to the very choppy, though shallow, waters.
Hope Town itself is a delight. The red and white striped lighthouse is home to the only remaining manned lighthouse in the Bahamas. The lodge I stayed at all those years ago has expanded into a lovely resort with fine snorkelling on the Atlantic side. The homes in the town, many of them rental cottages, are painted in pastel colours of every shade all of them looking as though the job was just done yesterday. Small gardens trail glowing boughs of bougainvillea, have oleander hedges and hibiscus bushes. There are blooms everyway, many of them new to me. Vehicles aren't allowed in the center of town making walking a pleasure. There are a few stores; a grocery, liquor store, some gift shops. One of the town's founders (1785) was Wyannie Malone, a Loyalist widow, who moved here to start a new life and there is a museum in town in a building similar to her original home.
Happily there is still a healthy local community on the island too as the many school children testify. We passed a uniformed group of young ones leaving school led by their teacher all singing rousing Christian hymns as they filed along the road on their way home. Later we found our dinghy had been commandeered by a group of excited young school boys who must have thought that anything that old and battered looking had to have been abandoned for them to find. We were cross-examined about the viability of the outboard before we were able to claim it back.
Since we arrived in Little Harbour we have been noticing plumes of smoke, and here in HopeTown we can see red glows at night coming from the mainland. It seems Abaco is suffering several out of control fires. They don't have the resources to combat anything of this magnitude and are having to basically let the fires burn themselves out.
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