One Happy Island — powder-white Eagle Beach, year-round trade winds for world-class kitesurfing, Dutch colonial Oranjestad, and the sunniest island in the Caribbean
Aruba is the southernmost of the Dutch ABC Islands, sitting just 27 km off the coast of Venezuela and almost entirely outside the hurricane belt. Eagle Beach, consistently ranked among the world's top five beaches, is wide, white, and blissfully uncrowded compared to the busier Palm Beach strip. Oranjestad's pastel Dutch colonial waterfront is lined with the island's best restaurants and a genuinely characterful old town. Aruba's food culture reflects its layered heritage: keshi yena — a whole Edam cheese hollowed and stuffed with spiced chicken or beef — is the national dish, while pastechi…
Aruba was inhabited by the Caquetío people, a branch of the Arawak, for at least 2,500 years before the Spanish arrived in 1499 and dismissed it as a 'useless island' — too arid for sugar cultivation and lacking the gold deposits found on other Caribbean islands. The Dutch West India Company seized it in 1636 and it has remained under Dutch sovereignty ever since, becoming a constituent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1986. Aloe vera was the island's primary export for over a century — Aruba was once the world's largest aloe producer. The construction of a massive oil refiner…