My annual vacation posting. This year’s trip was to the island of Aruba one of the Dutch Antilles islands (the other major ones being Bonaire and Curaçao) .
I’ll keep this short as there a tons of travel blogs out there that do a much better job of providing a more complete review of an Aruba (check out TripAdvisor).. So here’s my very brief bullet points.
Aruba things of note…
- Aruba is outside the Caribbean Hurricane belt so it’s a perfect place to visit any time of the year
- Aruba has strong tradewinds which blow all year round, so be prepared for constant wind. Which is why it’s such a great windsurfing and kitesurfing location.
- Aruba has 365 days of sun, virtually no rain, along with no hurricanes it’s a guaranteed sunny Carribean destination
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Boats docked near Catalina Cove
- Beaches have a wide variety of sand conditions from powder soft to coarse. Beaches are clean and beautiful clear turquoise water.
- It’s a small island, you can travel tip to tip in about an hour
- Language is Dutch and Papiamento (a mix of Dutch,Spanish, Portuguese)
- Divi-divi trees grow sideways because of constant trade winds
- Native population is a diverse group of Dutch, south Americans,other Carribean islanders and Asian (Chinese) ethnicities.
- Very safe to explore, very visible police presence.
- Drivers mostly follow rules of the road, be prepared for lots of round abouts and off road vehicles and ATV’s sharing the same roads.
