October 2023:
I decided it was a good idea to document the month long trip to Aruba. So let’s talk about what we did, where we stayed and what we liked and disliked.
We stayed near Eagle Beach, about a 12-15 minute walk from the beach at an airbnb. In the Bubali area. The location we actually stayed was The Lizard Inn. It’s newly renovated and we enjoyed our time there.
Since we were going to be there for a month, it was way out of budget to stay at a fancy hotel the whole time… don’t worry though, something big happened at the end of our trip that I’ll talk about later.
Also it’s always a good idea to have a few key phrases down in the local language. Dutch and the local language of Papiamento are the official languages of the country, but most Arubans speak 4 languages. Dutch, English, Papiamento and Spanish.
Want to learn a bit of Papiamento? Here are a few phrases to get you started!
Bon bini! = Welcome!
Bon dia. / Bon tardi. / Bon nochi. = Good morning. / Good afternoon. / Good evening.
Con ta bai? = How are you?
Mi ta bon! = I am well!
Danki. = Thank you.
Aruba ta dushi! = Aruba is lovely!
Where Did We Get Groceries?
When you go to a spot for a month, or even over a week, it tends to be way cheaper to cook as many meals at home as you can. So when we travel, that’s what we tend to do.
We ended up shopping at the Super Food Plaza for the majority of our food. We were about a half a mile away from there at the airbnb we were staying at, so it was an easy walk. It also was on the way to the beach and the way back from the beach. That made it super convenient for us.
It has a great selection of food and pretty good pricing compared to eating out. It’s a huge store. It felt like a store that you would go to in the states with how much they had. There’s also a pharmacy inside of it where we got sunscreen. They also sell wine, beer and have a liquor store inside of the store. There is also a nice little restaurant that we ate at a few times, Jack’s Cafe.
If you can buy sunscreen before you come to Aruba, it’ll save you a bunch of money. We struggled a little bit with some of the translations on foods because some of the labels are in Dutch. One tip I always try to do while traveling is download the local language dictionary on google translate. That way you can scan the product and it’ll auto-translate for you. In this case, I had downloaded Dutch,
Although sometimes the translations are just…odd.
What Restaurants Did We Eat At?
Day one when we arrived, we walked down to the beach and had dinner and a beer at Coco Loco Beach Bar. We split a chicken quesadilla which came with fries and each had a Balashi beer for sunset. We had been traveling all day and just needed to get some food in us.
Here’s the sunset the first night.
Splitting the meal was a good idea and it filled us both, for a total of $29. The Balashi’s were $6 a piece for a 8oz beer and the quesadilla was $17. The location is great, right on the beach, and the servers were friendly. But it’s weird paying $6 for a 8oz beer.
Truck di mama: A food truck on the beach in Eagle Beach. I had the grouper and Sam had the special, which happened to be conch. It was $15 for the conch and $17 for the grouper. Both meals came with french fries, rice, a pasta salad and the grouper came with a plantain. Overpriced for these meals and they weren’t that good.
The menu is roughly spray painted on a sort of post outside the food truck. No prices listed anywhere.
If we go back, we’ll share a steak order. That or the shrimp, they both looked good. The serving size could be a split meal between two people.
Here’s the menu for Truck di mama:
Matthew’s beachside restaurant in Manchebo Beach.
Sam saw some videos on either Tiktok or Instagram about Manchebo Beach and eating at Matthew’s, so one day we walked down there to see it for ourselves.
The beach was huge here. It reminded me of Siesta Key Beach in Sarasota, Florida.
At Matthew’s, you are right at the beach just a little bit above sea level so you have a nice breeze and a beautiful view for the meal.
The Islander Bar And Grill: This place has a great upstairs bar/restaurant area. We ended up having a couple of beers and split a pizza. The pizza was decent and the beers were cold, but we went here for the view and it was a great view.
Here’s what we’ve done so far:
We’re beach people so a lot of our time was just spent hanging out at Eagle Beach and reading and swimming. For the most part, the tide wasn’t heavy so people can just hang out in the water and relax. We did a lot of that, with me swimming around and diving to see how deep different spots were.
The water was extremely clear, so I was able to see easily underwater even without goggles. If I were to do this again, I would have bought a pair of small goggles or a decent snorkel mask. We have an awesome snorkel mask that we use in Florida, but it’s too big to travel with when we only travel with backpacks.
I read a lot on my Kindle Paperwhite while we were there. Those things are terrific for reading at the beach. Lightweight, thousands of books and no glare so it’s easy to read.
Fofoti Tree: A cool little tree that is made to withstand storms. It was busy with people taking photos there. Kinda looks like a small banyon tree. You can see it in the photo below on the right side.
Offroad Evolution Aruba Rental & Tours
We did a 2 person UTV and rode around the island and it was a blast. We don’t usually stay at big box hotels when visiting a place for more than a few days or a week, so we stayed at an small airbnb. The team over at Offroad Evolution sent someone over (shoutout Jelle) in the morning to pick us up and we ended up driving to pick up another couple in the morning.
After we got to the location, it was a breeze to rent the UTV. We paid the deposit and were shown the map they recommend of visiting places and we did a walkaround and then were on our way. It was super simple. If you chose to go with them, be sure to bring your ID and a credit card for the deposit.
We then headed west and then north, to the first stop which was the California Lighthouse.
It was pretty breezy up top and got really busy but the view was great.
The stairs were pretty chaotic going up and down with how narrow they were the higher up you got.
The lighthouse was named after the S.S. California which sunk before the construction of the lighthouse in 1910. It’s high up on the elevation and stands out quite a bit compared to the rest of everything being closer to sea level. It’s one of Aruba’s scenic trademarks.
The lighthouse is open everyday 9:00am – 7:00pm and has a $5 admission fee per person.
After the lighthouse we hopped back in the UTV and headed east along the coast of the island. One thing that I never knew about Aruba was that a big part of the island is still uninhabited. A lot of the east side of the island is just… desert. It’s very interesting to see.
Alto Vista Chapel
Our next stop was the Alto Vista Chapel. I didn’t know anything about the chapel except that it was on the map as one of the stops. It was a good little break with some shops and vendors to pick stuff up if you wanted. We didn’t end up getting anything.
Alto Vista Chapel is a small Catholic chapel that stands on the hills above the north shore of the sea and to the northeast of the town of Noord, on the island of Aruba, 27 km north of the coast of Venezuela.
The church, painted on the outside in stark bright yellow, makes it a conspicuous religious monument for people to visit. The present Chapel of Alto Vista was completed in 1952 and stands in the same location as the original chapel, which was built by Domingo Silvestre, the Venezuelan missionary from Santa Ana de Coro, Venezuela, in 1750.
The Alto Vista Chapel was stated to be the location where conversion of Aruban Indians to Christianity started.
– Wikipedia
We jumped off a little ridge into a natural pool as well. I ended up getting a little cut on my hand and my knee because I climbed over to an area that no one was hanging around in. I was curious to see the spot, so I had to check it out. You always need to remain curious and go explore.
Baby Beach
I’m not sure what the hype is about this place. Yes, it is a beautiful beach… but when you’re in Aruba, almost all of the beaches are beautiful.
It was pretty busy but it wasn’t any nicer than the other beaches we visited. The positive was that it had less waves than other beaches and it was a bit more shallow in spots than other beaches we’ve been to on the island. It was pretty shallow which made it easier for the kids who were there to stand up and enjoy the ocean.
But compared to Eagle Beach, I personally think Eagle Beach was better for adults.
Zeerover’s for lunch
We stopped at Zeerovers on the ride home and the fish of the day were red snapper and mahi mahi. So we got one of each along with 6 shrimp and some Balashi chills and waters. While I had read a few articles about how good Zeerovers was, I was still surprised at it. The price was less than we had spent at other places and it was pretty quick to get the food.
We also lucked out and arrived before 10 other people lined up behind us. Check out the meal below.
After Zeerover’s we ended up taking the UTV back and ended the day.
Flamingo Beach on Renaissance Island
For the last 3 days of the trip, we wanted to make it special. You know, the typical touristy stuff and being real fancy. So, we booked a 2 night stay at the Renaissance Wind Creek Aruba Resort. This is the place you go and stay if you want to go see the flamingos. We wanted to see the flamingos, I mean, who wouldn’t want to see flamingos?
I’m not sure what it is about flamingos that makes them so interesting. Maybe the bright pink colors? Either way, it was a pretty cool experience. While some of the blog posts I read said to make sure you get there early in the day to make sure that you can feed them, I noticed that throughout the day people were feeding them. Maybe early in the day you can get multiple flamingos to come over and eat from you? Later on in the day we had a few different times where 1-2 flamingos came over to eat the feed out of our hands.
If you plan on doing this, make sure you take some quarters to get the feed.
The big moment
On October 24, 2023 I asked my girlfriend to marry me. We were on Flamingo Beach and I was racking my brain to figure out where to actually ask. There aren’t many private areas besides the cabanas, but those aren’t even that private. You’re still pretty close to everyone else.
Lucky for us, I’m a wanderer. I like to just kinda wander around and see stuff. This led us to walking through an area that appeared to have no one there. We ended up walking down a pathway that opened up to an area that looks like it is set up for wedding parties or big events.
The good news is that no one was there, so we had the full area to ourselves. It was off from the main beach and not visible to the majority of the people so it was our moment. I dropped down on my knee and asked Sam to marry me in the sand.
She said yes! So we’ll be getting married sometime in 2024. Then, we’ll be heading off to Africa for a Safari honeymoon.