Aruba

The California Lighthouse sits on a hilltop perch at Aruba's northermost tip. It's active days are over; the beacon itself has been closed to the public for a number of years, ever since someone committed suicide by jumping from its summit. The surrounding area features some of the island's most spectacular scenery--gentle sand dunes, rocky coral shoreline and turbulent waves. The structure itself gets its name from the 'California', a passenger ship that sank off the nearby coast before the lighthouse was completed in 1916.