Aruba – Spring Break 2024 – Following Jesus, exploring His Creation

We arrived in Aruba on Friday afternoon, March 22 and left on Thursday afternoon, March 28. Our travel agent arranged bus transportation for us that picked us up at the airport and took us to the resort. The temperatures when we were there were between 78 & 85 degrees every day with no rain. We learned that it is like this all year long! I could definitely live in these temps year-round 😌 And most of the time we were there, it was breezy. Some days, the wind was more intense than others. Their “rainy season” is Nov, Dec & Jan, but they still don’t get much rain. So it’s pretty much a perfect paradise in my opinion ☀️

Aruba has beautiful blue waters but also has a much more diverse landscape than we realized! One thing that surprised us was the number of cactus plants that they have! We saw them when we left the airport on the way to our resort, but didn’t think much about them. When we went on our tour of the island on Sunday, we noticed a ton of them! There were some places we went to that had very dry, dusty roads and we realized just how dry it really is.

We stayed at the Divi & Tamarijn All-Inclusives. Our favorite part was that we got a ground floor room (at the Tamarijn) & were able to walk right out of our room onto the sand, and the ocean was just a few feet away 😌 Also, our room (in the 1300 building) was close to the pool, the front lobby, the buffet, and some of the restaurants. We said a few times that we felt like we were on a cruise. The buffet food was similar to the food on a cruise buffet, and when we walked outside, there was the ocean 😁 We enjoyed the resort and felt safe the whole time we were there.

View from the water looking back up to our room

Leaving the pool area walking back to our room.

We had dinner at the Red Parrot Friday:

Saturday, we hung out on the beach all day & had dinner at the buffet early because we had a photo session scheduled & the photographer was picking us up at 5:45 (we didn’t have a rental car).

Our excursion was all day on Sunday and was with ABC Tours. It was great! We had a ton of fun! Our tour was called the Island Ultimate Safari. The guides made it fun, but we also had fun meeting other people and because of the vehicle we rode in. It was a “safari jeep” off-road vehicle. We bounced around on those seats on the bumpy roads and laughed our heads off🤣 It was way different than what we thought it would be like! This prob wouldn’t be a good tour if you have back problems 😬

These are some of the places we visited –

Natural Bridge:

Bushiribana Gold Mill Ruins:

California Light House:

View from the top of the lighthouse:

Arikok National Park:

It was very dry here and not what we would have pictured a “tropical island” to be like

Natural Pool – this was so cool!! It was one of my favorite things! There were waves crashing all around but in the middle of these rocks was literally a “natural pool.” We swam in it and used goggles to look down & see tropical fish and crabs. It was calm compared to what was going on around it 😌

Baby Beach:

I didn’t get great pics here, but we had fun snorkeling and saw several fish! It is shallow for a long way out before it starts to get deep.

I’m so glad we did this tour because it gave us an idea of how diverse the island of Aruba is. Even though the island is “only” 21 miles long and 6 miles wide, it seemed much bigger to us 😊

Monday was my birthday 🥳 and we enjoyed a day of swimming and relaxing on the beach. My favorite meal was this night. We had reservations at Paparazzi – the Italian restaurant 😋

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent doing pretty much the same things – swimming and relaxing – which is what you’re supposed to do on this kind of vacation, right?

We loved the Asian restaurant Wednesday night! We were not even planning to go to it and then it ended up being our favorite!

At our resort, you could have pizza (and other items) any time you wanted 😋

We had some little visitors a few times 😁

Some nights, they had entertainment by the pool

We also enjoyed playing pool & pickleball

We left the resort at 12:30 on Thursday. Our flight was at 3:45. They recommend being at the Aruba airport 3 hours before your flight. Even on a Thursday, we had to wait in some long lines. I think you definitely need to allow 3 hours at the airport if you are flying out on a weekend.

Some interesting things I learned while in Aruba: By the time their kids are through elementary school, they can speak 4 languages 😳 Their official language is Dutch, and they are taught English & Spanish. The other language they speak is Papiamento; it is the most widely spoken language in the Dutch Caribbean. Aruba is a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The people of Aruba were so friendly, and we enjoyed meeting them 😊