Overlooking the choppy waters of the Indian Ocean, a red-and-white-striped lighthouse now sits unassumingly in the coastal outskirts of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest port city. Apparently, the 28-meter-tall structure also has a close sidekick, a decades-old shipwreck which barely protrudes above the surface of the water during high tide.

Constructed in 1905, the lighthouse was originally painted with black and white horizontal stripes, and then in the 1930’s, its slender neck was entirely whitewashed. While the tower successfully guided vessels across the area for nearly a century, it has been abandoned for the last two decades or so. Despite its abandonment, though, the building was recently rejuvenated when an army of paint-armed workers covered its cylindrical torso with red and white stripes.

This is Mozambique's best known and most visited lighthouse. ⚓