Aruba 101,
your first 24 hours
The questions everyone asks in the taxi from the airport, answered straight. No brochure language.
Airport to your hotel
Taxis here do not use meters. The Department of Transport sets one fixed price for the journey, and it is for the car, not for each person in it.
Should I change money?
No. Spend US dollars and keep the florin you get as change.
Aruba’s own currency is the florin, and the tourist economy runs on dollars alongside it. Restaurants, shops and taxis take dollars without blinking. The rate is fixed rather than floating, so there is no clever day to change money.
The one thing worth knowing: pay in dollars and your change may come back in florin, which is awkward to spend at the airport on the way home. Break big notes early rather than late.
How bad is the sun, honestly?
Worse than it feels, and that is the trap.
Aruba sits in a constant trade wind. The wind keeps you comfortable in direct midday sun, so nothing tells you that you are burning until the evening. People who are careful at home get caught here on day one.
The local habit is to treat the wind as a warning rather than a relief.
Do I need to rent a car?
Try a taxi first. Getting one here is easy, and the driver is half the reason to take it.
A taxi in Aruba is not the anonymous ride it is at home. Drivers here have spent their lives on this island and most will tell you where the food is good, which beach is calm today, what the building you just passed used to be, and what is on this weekend. People arrive with a list from the internet and leave with a better one from a driver.
The prices are fixed and published, so there is no meter to watch and nothing to negotiate. You already know what it costs before you open the door.
Rent a car if you want to spend whole days deep in Arikok and along the north coast on your own clock. For everything else, ask the driver.
What if something goes wrong?
There is a hospital minutes from the strip, and a pharmacy open somewhere every night.
Pharmacies here run a rota, so one is always on duty overnight, and it is a different one each night. Your hotel front desk will have the emergency number for the island written down; ask on the way in rather than looking for it later.
LYNX keeps the hospital, tonight’s duty pharmacy and the late supermarket together in one place, updated daily.
Open Health EssentialsSay it in Papiamento
English will get you through the whole week. These will get you further than that.
Papiamento is Aruba’s own language, and hearing a visitor try it lands differently here than a phrasebook does anywhere else. The full guide is coming.