The small island of Aruba is often called one of the few places that can truly be considered something close to paradise. This beautiful place has been under Dutch control since 1636, apart from a brief period of British rule during the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century. Located in the southern waters of the Caribbean, just 18 miles from mainland Venezuela, it is only 6 miles wide by 20 miles long, but it has so many fabulous activities to offer the half million tourists who visit it annually.
It has to be said that Aruba certainly caters to the well-heeled visitor with some incredibly luxurious hotels lining the ocean. Anyone traveling on a budget may struggle, but that’s not to say there aren’t low-cost accommodation opportunities, they just tend to be hidden. There are some great restaurants serving top-quality cuisine including freshly caught seafood, all presented in a spectacularly tropical setting. There’s 24-hour sun, unspoilt scenery, sparkling white sand beaches and a host of fabulous water activities including swimming, windsurfing, sailing, snorkelling and scuba diving.
Also, Aruba has a couple of intriguing farms that are a big hit with tourists. These are not your conventional farms with cattle, sheep, goats and chickens, these offer two completely different, but equally fascinating experiences. The Aruba Ostrich Farm offers an intriguing glimpse into the behavioral patterns of these remarkable birds, with nearly 100 of the species perfectly at home in the rugged terrain. The butterfly farm is about as remote as it gets, but just as captivating. A lusciously colored tropical garden awaits visitors who will enjoy a tour that provides any keen photographer with some of their most impressive images.
However, it’s the diving that really draws the area and you’ll find an Aruban dive center lurking at virtually every corner around the coastal highways. The shipwrecks that lie off the coast are world famous and attract divers from all over the planet. There are also some of the best reefs to explore in the Caribbean, with some truly spectacular coral formations to view. There is also a rich serving of exotic marine life that you will visit as you investigate the underwater charms of this wonderland, with creatures such as stingrays, manta rays and barracudas all in evidence. The vast majority of the dive sites are scattered along the protected coasts in the south and west of the island.
Aruba is currently running a program to preserve the ecological health of its reefs and has established educational courses in which visiting divers are encouraged to actively participate. With a little more than 3 degrees difference in temperatures in the winter and summer months and hardly any rainfall, the only thing that affects scuba diving in the area is the wind. The trade winds blow throughout the year, but they are strongest between January and April, so these are probably the months to avoid if you are looking for perfect conditions, but even in that period the underwater experiences are incredible.