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Aruba

Caribbean

A flat, dry, cactus-studded island off the coast of Venezuela, Aruba is the westernmost of the Dutch Caribbean ABC islands and one of the region's steadiest wind and water playgrounds. Constant easterly trade winds make its north-west beaches, from Hadicurari to Fisherman's Huts, a world-class windsurfing and kitesurfing ground, while off Malmok lies the Antilla, a 1940 German freighter that is the largest shipwreck in the Caribbean. Ashore, Oranjestad mixes Dutch colonial pastels with a deep Amerindian heritage, and each winter the island stages the longest, largest carnival in the Dutch Caribbean.

4 activities · 4 pairings · 6 verified providers

What you can do in Aruba

Kitesurfing

Fisherman's HutsJan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Nov DecFisherman's Huts is one of the surest bets in Caribbean kitesurfing. Aruba sits right in the belt of the easterly trade winds, and here they funnel along the north-west coast and blow side-shore across a wide, shallow bay with a sandy bottom and a protective reef offshore. That combination, reliable 15 to 25 knot wind for most of the year, flat waist-to-chest-deep water and a soft launch, makes Hadicurari an ideal place to learn, where a beginner can practise water starts and stand up again rather than being swept out. The wind peaks in the Aruba high season around May to July, when the annual Hi-Winds regatta brings kiters and windsurfers from across the region, but it blows well most months. The same bay serves freeriders and freestylers who carve the flats, while more advanced riders head to Boca Grandi on the wilder south-east coast for waves and gusty flat water. Two long-running local schools work the beach, one family-run for over twenty years and the other the island's IKO-affiliated centre, so lessons, gear and downwinders are easy to arrange. Warm water, dependable wind and forgiving flats put Aruba among the best places anywhere to take up the sport.

Museums & Galleries

Oranjestadyear-roundThe National Archaeological Museum Aruba is the place to understand who was on this island long before the Dutch, and it is one of the best-presented small museums in the Caribbean. Housed in the beautifully restored former dwellings of the Ecury family, a landmark of central Oranjestad, and reopened there in 2009, it holds a permanent collection of more than ten thousand Amerindian artefacts, the physical record of the Caquetio and earlier peoples who lived on Aruba for over four thousand years. The displays move through the Pre-Ceramic, Ceramic and historic periods in pottery, shell, stone, bone and glass, from stone tools and burial urns to the beadwork and trade goods that arrived with European contact. It is a national institution rather than a tourist attraction, free to enter, and it does the quiet work of setting Aruba's indigenous past inside the wider story of the Caribbean and the South American mainland just offshore. For a rainy afternoon or a break from the beach, it gives the flat, dry island a depth of time that the resort strip never hints at, and pairs naturally with a walk through the colonial streets and the fort around it.

Music & Culture Festivals

Aruba CarnivalOranjestadJan FebAruba Carnival is the longest and largest carnival in the Dutch Caribbean, a season that takes over the whole island for about six weeks and ends in Oranjestad. Introduced in its organised form in the 1950s and shaped by the foundation SMAC since 1966, it runs from the first weekend of January through to the eve of Lent, blending Caribbean roadmarch, calypso and soca with the brass-and-steel-pan sound and the Dutch and Latin heritage of the ABC islands. The calendar builds through jump-ups, tumba and calypso music contests, children's parades and the Queen elections, then peaks on the final weekend with the torch-lit Lighting Parade through San Nicolas on the Saturday and the enormous Grand Parade down Oranjestad's main boulevard on the Sunday, hours of feathered, sequinned troupes, music trucks and dancing crowds. It closes with the burning of King Momo in the small hours of Ash Wednesday. This is a participatory street carnival rather than a spectator show, and visitors who turn up for the final Oranjestad weekend find themselves pulled straight into the roadmarch.

Scuba Diving

Malmokyear-roundMalmok is where Aruba's marquee dive sits, and it is one of the most accessible great wreck dives anywhere. The Antilla was a brand-new 121-metre German cargo ship in 1940 when her captain scuttled her off Malmok rather than surrender her to the Dutch after the invasion of the Netherlands, and she has rested on her port side in 18 metres of clear water ever since. Because she is so large and so shallow, with parts breaking the surface, snorkellers drift over the same wreck that divers swim through, past cavernous holds now grown over in coral and sponge and busy with fish, one of the reasons she is nicknamed the Ghost Ship. The leeward north-west coast that shelters her also gives Malmok itself calm, shallow, clear water that is ideal for a first Discover Scuba session, confined-water training or freediving, while certified divers add the reefs and a scatter of other wrecks along the coast. Warm water year round, little current on the lee side and a wreck this big and this shallow make Malmok a rare site that works for a complete beginner and a seasoned diver on the same boat.

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Kitesurfing
Museums
Music Festivals
Scuba Diving

Upcoming events in Aruba

Aruba CarnivalFeb 6–9, 2027expected