They Say It’s “One Happy Island,” But…

Oranjestad, Aruba – September 2022

Aruba. Jamaica. Oooh I wanna take ya…

That’s what springs to mind for most people when you say Aruba—the 1988 song “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys, eliciting dreams of umbrella drinks and coconut-scented tanning oil wafting by your nose as you lay on a perfect beach under palm trees while listening to a steel drum band. Holding hands with your lover while you walk slowly into the perfectly clear, Caribbean blue water to kiss in front of the sunset in picture-perfect fashion. The locals support and encourage this mirage, with the One Happy Island slogan festooned on everything in sight and spouted by the locals at every opportunity.

Aruba may be the perfect One Happy Island in some areas, just not where we stayed. We’d found a great deal on a hotel near the airport, and snapped it up with no more than a cursory scan of traveler reviews. We were lured by the (very) cheap price for the week, the very close proximity to Surfside Beach, the apparent array of restaurants within walking distance, and the presence of not one but two bus stops on Google maps. We reasoned that with two bus stops, a variety of nearby restaurants, and a short walk to one of the nicest beaches on the island, we’d be set for the week, spending our days lazing on the beach with drinks then catching a bus into the main part of town for cheap dinners of island delights. And thank goodness the hotel was cheap, because everything else on Aruba is ISLAND EXPENSIVE.

What is island expensive? Why would I make that kind of distinction beyond just saying that the vacation was expensive? My dear friends, if you have not spent significant time on an island in the middle of the ocean let this serve as your warning. ISLAND EXPENSIVE means whatever it is your heart desires is probably a) not located on the island, or b) costs at least 5 times more than it does on the mainland. In addition, there’s the tourist mark-up that accompanies the 5 times cost increase, meaning if you buy your heart’s desire in a store near the tourist areas, the cost is really more like 8 to 10 times more expensive than on the mainland.

This is understandable when you really think about having to put all of those things on a ship that uses lots of fuel to cross a huge water body to unload that stuff onto the island, and the fact that tourists are the main industry. Even though Jared and I know from many previous experiences about ISLAND EXPENSIVE, somehow we always manage to forget between island vacations, meaning we spent a week cringing at the cost of everything we ate, drank, or did. Seeing the cost in Aruban florins didn’t really help, because even with an exchange rate of 1.7 florins to the dollar, ISLAND EXPENSIVE is still really expensive.

Not that you need Aruban florins. Everyone we interacted with seemed to know the price of everything in dollars, and when we wanted to pay in florins, they had to pull out their phone to do the conversion. In hindsight we did not need to get florins from the ATM at the airport, but we should have brought a lot more US $1 and $5 bills. Over the last two years of sitting at home through COVID, we forgot all our travel rules and only brought twenties, except for one $10 we got at the Atlanta airport because I wanted peanut M&Ms for a snack.

But I digress. We arrived at the Aruba airport in the mid-afternoon, sailed through customs and immigration, went straight to the ATM, and were absolutely shocked at the lack of touts. It’s amazing to us that an island nation that relies on tourism for its main industry doesn’t have a hall of touts at the airport, but hats off to Aruba—nary a one grabbed us, yelled at us, blocked our way, or shoved pamphlets into our faces as we walked to the ATM and the taxi stand. I’d looked up the price of the taxi beforehand and knew it was going to be expensive, so it wasn’t unexpected when the driver charged US$18 after driving one mile from the airport to our hotel. No problem, we thought, because there were restaurants and bus stops nearby, and we wouldn’t need a taxi again until we were ready to go back to the airport.

Once we got to the hotel, it didn’t take us long to change and go out to the pool for drinks. It was very hot, so we spent the afternoon in and out of the pool while trying the resort’s stock of Venezuelan and Aruban rums. It was a nice afternoon that we thoroughly enjoyed until we were ready to head to dinner.

As I mentioned earlier, it appeared on Google maps that there were many restaurants within walking distance. We got dressed and headed out to look for a wonderful Aruban dinner to cap off our relaxing afternoon, only to realize… all of those “restaurants” were really just walk-up counters with the equivalent of hot dogs and popcorn. The focus of all of the places immediately around the hotel was definitely convenience foods and alcohol. While those things certainly have a place, they weren’t really what we wanted, so we walked toward the beach to check out some other places.

The beachside hamburger shack had small menus out that we mistook for the full menu, and not wanting fast food we passed it by. We wandered farther up the beach to two of the places that had tables in the sand, with beautiful views of the sunset to accompany the meal. One appeared closed, so we went to the other. Luckily, September is the low season, because it turns out we were at one of the most expensive restaurants on the island, one that normally requires reservations weeks in advance. But because it was the off season, we were able to get a seat on the beach and watch the sunset while enjoying an exceptional dinner and the best dessert we’d have all week. We went off to bed in a good mood, full and happy, with the intention to get up in the morning and catch the bus to the grocery store for supplies.

The next morning, we got up, got ready, and went out to try and catch a bus. We asked a couple of the staff at the hotel, only to learn to our dismay that the bus stops shown on Google maps were phantoms. Maybe they existed before the pandemic, but they definitely weren’t in use anymore. The hotel staff told us we could walk 15 minutes to a stadium farther inland to catch the bus, or walk 15 minutes down the coast to a grocery store. None too pleased, we set off into the burning heat of a clear sunny day to walk 15 minutes to the store.

It turns out that while the air temperature in Aruba tends to stay between 84-88°F year-round, the heat index can exceed 100°F. We arrived at the store completely soaked with sweat, hoping to quickly grab a few supplies and book a couple tours before hiking back. We walked around and around the tiny grocery store, looking for anything we could cobble together for breakfast and snacks, finally settling on some bread, lunchmeat, chocolate bars, and cashews, plus some soft drinks, 5 liters of water, and sports drinks to help avoid heatstroke. We decided to make one more pass to augment our snack stack, and there they were… miracle of miracles, 5 packs of Tuareg cookies peeking out like Captain Cook’s buried treasure.

We gasped and rejoiced, forgetting the heat and the missing bus, and grabbed all 5 packages to eat during the week. This was only the third time in all of our travels that we’d located these delicious coconut snacks, and with no immediate plans to return to Chile or Guatemala, we were ecstatic with our Tuareg treasure.

Leaving the store, we quickly walked up to the Renaissance Hotel to book a couple of excursions for the week. Giving in to the fact that we were carrying almost 10 liters of fluid and were about to melt, we grabbed a US$10 taxi back to our hotel where we found that the heat had melted our chocolate. Still starry-eyed about our Tuaregs, we put the chocolate in the fridge and went to the beach to cool off in the water. After a lazy afternoon on the beach, we were once more ready for dinner and hoping for a cheaper option than the beachfront restaurants.

We’d already established that the shacks facing our hotel didn’t really have dinner food, so we located a promising restaurant on Google maps farther inland and headed out… Only to arrive at the restaurant and find it was closed, even though the hours on the door indicated it should be open. Grumbling, hot, and annoyed, we walked farther inland toward what Google said was a sushi restaurant.

The farther we walked, the more we realized we were in a very residential area. There was the occasional car on the street as people came home from work, but mostly it was dark and deserted. After passing a couple more restaurants that were closed, we happened upon a hamburger stand and, not willing to risk additional walking in the heat to find out if the sushi restaurant was open, we decided hamburgers were a great idea. We also got some of the local soft drinks, in my case a Tropical Cherry, that were really pretty good. Yet another delicious drink that Coca-Cola serves the rest of the world while punishing the US with fart-flavored tonic water and Dr. Pepper.

We woke the next morning and quickly got ready for a snorkeling tour we’d booked to Baby Beach and Mangel Alto. It turned out that we were the only ones on the tour, and we had a great morning looking at many kinds of fish we hadn’t previously seen. The currents in both locations were a little tougher than we’re used to, but our guide was wonderful and had a very keen eye for wildlife. He found trumpet fish, an octopus, and an eel among other things, pointing them out so we could take pictures. After a wonderful time on our tour, we headed over to the beach shack for lunch and were pleasantly surprised to find they had an extensive menu that included delicious chicken satay. We spent the rest of the afternoon on our lounge chairs with the occasional dip into the water to cool off, since the heat index remained stubbornly over 100°F. We also quickly realized that the beach was at the end of the airport runway, and we could watch the planes land over the water (which was rather entertaining and resulted in the occasional whiff of jet fuel on the breeze).

After a pleasant morning and afternoon, we headed to the only overwater restaurant on the island, which was supposed to have food on par with the beach restaurant where we ate our first night. Alas, the overwater restaurant was somewhat mediocre in both food and service, while somehow still costing the equivalent of a small country’s annual GDP. Somewhat disappointed, we schlepped back to the hotel and collapsed in the AC while grumbling about the drag racing on the road outside our room and the thumpy club music next door. Almost halfway through our trip, we were beginning to realize that even though we love tropical beaches with umbrella drinks and snorkeling, we weren’t meshing well with the One Happy Island.

With 4 more days on the island, would we be able to find our way and create the perfect mirage invoked by the Beach Boys? Join us in our next installment of The Escape Hatch to find out!

Bonus snorkeling pictures

We saw a lot of sea life on our snorkeling trip. Here are a few of the denizens of the deep (well actually shallow) that we encountered.