Aruba

​It was a super rainy winter here in Seattle (so unusual right?) and we were all desperately in need of some serious sun! After a little research and a quick chat with the fam, we landed on a trip to the sunny islands of Aruba and Curacao in the Caribbean! Awww yeah!! The islands are only a twenty-minute flight apart so we figured if we’re flying all the way out to the Caribbean, we might as well hit up two different islands while we’re there.
 
On the night of our departure, we hopped on a red eye to Fort Lauderdale that arrived around 6:30am. Tyson, Wesley and I slept a good chunk of the flight but poor Marshall only nodded off for maybe 20 minutes. We had a two-hour layover which gave us plenty of time for a leisurely breakfast at a café. We thought our connecting flight was in the same terminal but when we checked the screen after breakfast, our flight was nowhere to be found! We panicked thinking we had the wrong flight information (definitely wouldn’t be the first time I screwed something up). After asking around we realized we were in the wrong terminal and had to walk with our luggage a quarter mile outside the airport in the muggy Florida heat to the correct terminal. Thank God we got to our gate just in time for boarding! Phew!
 
After a two and a half hour flight, we arrived to the gorgeous island of Aruba! Bring on the sun, baby! We were hoping to quickly bust through customs and head to our condo rental, but apparently a zillion flights arrived in this tiny airport at same time and the customs line was like 45 mins long. Oh come on! We even tried to play the “but we have young kids” card but they didn’t fall for it and still made us stand in that crazy long line. Grrrr! Eventually we made it through and took a quick 15-minute taxi ride to our condo called Tropical Digs.
 
As soon as we arrived at the condo, the boys wanted to get their swimsuits on ASAP and go straight to the pool! Luckily our condo came with all the amenities of the resort next door called Divi Village Golf & Beach Resort, including a huge infinity pool and a giant blue water slide that the boys couldn’t wait to try out. Tyson went down right away but Wesley was a little apprehensive and would only go down on Marshall’s lap at first. But after going down a couple times he was brave enough to go by himself. And after about 50 times, he was going down backwards and headfirst! At one point another little boy let the boys borrow his round floaty and they were flying down the slide together. It was fun watching Wesley conquer his fear and have the time of his life!
 
After a few hours playing at the pool, the sun was about to set so we headed across the street to Eagle Beach to watch the colorful sunset. We strolled up and down beach to scope out the various restaurants and landed on Beach Bar (No better name, right?!). Tyson and I had a Pokémon battle at our patio table while Marshall and Wesley played in the sand next to the table. The wind was a bit gusty at times and the Pokémon cards started flying everywhere, turning the game into 52 card pick up pretty quickly. I suppose that was our que to put the cards away and focus on our dinner. Once our tummy’s reached capacity with our delicious burgers and hot dogs, we all realized we were exhausted from the long travel day and headed back to our room to hit the hay early.
 
The next morning, we were ready for an adventurous day of exploring the island! The best way we found to do that was by UTV – a four person dune buggy. We picked up our UTV and drove straight to a coffee shop I had researched that was known to have amazing blended coffee drinks, simply called Coffee House (Aruba sure knows how to name things). It was a cutely decorated shop with a European feel and eclectic choice of furniture. We each ordered a delicious blended drink. I had a caramel Frappuccino, Marshall had java chip, Tyson had cookies and cream and Wesley had dark chocolate chip – no coffee in them, of course. But the boys’ drinks did come with whipped cream and sprinkles on top. Yum!
 
We jumped back in our UTV and stumbled upon a beach where kite surfers were training and had to stop to watch them. We all had our swimsuits on already except Marshall for some odd reason.  Since there was no public restroom, Marshall had no choice but to change in the “car”. The UTV didn’t have any windows and there were tourists walking all around us. I had a bright idea to drape up a towel on one side of the car to shield him. Clearly that was pointless since anyone could have just walked around the other side and had a nice little peep show. Anyway, as we were walking to the beach it started raining really hard out of nowhere. Noooooo! We looked around for shelter and only found one random beach chair under a palm tree that we all snuggled under with towels over our heads. I’m sure we looked like lunatics to the locals, but oh well. We enjoyed taking turns telling knock knock jokes to entertain the boys until the rain let up.
 
When we had a chance, we ran back to the UTV to try to beat the rain, but it started to rain again just as we started driving. And unfortunately, the UTV also didn’t have a front windshield to block the rain! Seriously, who the heck designs a vehicle without a windshield?  We had to somehow shield ourselves, so Marshall put on his sunglasses and held his t-shirt up over the bottom half of his face while the kids snuggled up nice and comfy under their towels in the back seat. I just so happened to bring a jacket, yes in 85-degree weather, which clearly was a smart choice in that moment. I draped it over my head and face as I had to protect my makeup from smearing and my hair from turning into a giant frizzball. Priorities!
 
Luckily, the rain let up and we made our way to the farthest east point on the island where there was a beautiful white lighthouse. We walked up 117 steep, windy stairs all the way to the very top to check out the views. Although it was super windy, there were gorgeous views of the ocean which made it worth the crazy wind struck hair. On the way down I started filming the boys climbing down the staircase and that’s when all of a sudden Wesley lost his grip and tripped down a few stairs. Our poor boy was crying hysterically the rest of the way down. As we exited the lighthouse there was a brightly colored party bus jamming out to “who let the dogs out” which made a great distraction. Thankfully Wesley forgot all about those mean stairs and was ready to continue our adventure.
 
We were all hungry for lunch and headed to a nearby beach that had a little food stand where we ordered chicken skewers to nibble on. While we were waiting for our order number to called, the boys started climbing on a little wooden boat that was part of the restaurant’s decor. There was black goo (poop of some kind, no doubt) splattered on the boat that Wesley’s hands magically found. YUCK! There happened to be an outdoor shower nearby so we ran over to it, only to be stopped by a random lady sitting next to it collecting money. She was charging people $1 to rinse off sand from the beach!!! We didn’t have a dollar on us, so I asked if Wesley could just rinse his poopy hands and she said that was okay. Good thing!
 
We brought our lunch down to the beach and claimed a couple of beach chairs. Wesley and I enjoyed building sandcastles while Tyson and Marshall had a blast body surfing. We were all having so much fun that we totally lost track of time. We realized that we needed to return our UTV in a few hours and we were still on the complete opposite side of the island from the rental place. Whoops! We pulled out our GPS and found a road that looked like it would get us back to town at a decent time. We quickly realized was that it was a rocky dirt road full of massive potholes along the north, extremely windy side of the island that isn’t developed AT ALL.
 
Perfect for off-roading! Yeehaw! Marshall was going crazy cruising around on the windy and super bumpy terrain. The boys were squealing in back seat with excitement and threw their hands up in the air like they were on a roller coaster. We passed by several cliffside private beaches and a super rocky area next the ocean where there were a ton of stacked rocks everywhere. So awesome!
 
After we had been driving along this dirt road for nearly an hour, we looked at our GPS and the dot had barely moved. Clearly this road was not going to get us back to town in time so we searched on our map to find a nearby paved road that got us back much quicker. Thank goodness! We actually got back a little early and had time to stop in downtown Oranjestad for an ice cream treat for the boys. Woohoo! The quaint town had some beautiful old buildings and while we were strolling around, we found our Aruba Christmas ornament. As you know, we get an ornament for every country we travel to so we can reminisce each Christmas about all our adventures and great memories we’ve made as a family.
 
After returning our UTV, we headed back to the hotel and asked the boys what they wanted to do next. Guess what…we went straight to the pool! The boys were so excited to go down the waterslide again. We had bought these cheap little blow-up tubes in town after the little boy had let Tyson and Wesley borrow his the day before. They were having so much fun trying all different positions to go down (backwards, head first, train, etc.) I swear they went down like 100 times before we finally said it was time for dinner. This slide was seriously the highlight of the whole trip for them.
 
That evening we hopped on a shuttle to nearby hotel called Casa Del Mar for dinner right on the beach. The boys enjoyed playing in sand while we waited for our dinner to arrive. At one point I looked over and didn’t see Wesley anywhere! I panicked for a second and started searching all around the beach for him. I finally found him quite a way down the beach where he was checking out a big hole another kid had dug in the sand. Phew! Nothing like an experience like that to remind you to never keep your eyes off these kids! At that point it was time to eat so we reeled the boys back to the table where we enjoyed a lovely dinner while gazing out at the sunset before heading back and getting some well-deserved rest.
 
The following day was our last full day in Aruba. I had found a breakfast café called Dutch Pancake House that served crepes which the boys are completely obsessed with. The boys ordered a Nutella crepe with strawberries and bananas and I ordered a peach crepe with Gran Marnier sauce. The crepes were ginormous and mine even came with the sauce on fire! So cool!
 
After our scrumptious breakfast we walked a few minutes down the road to a hotel called Renaissance. I had planned a fun day trip to a gorgeous private island that is owned by that hotel. There’s an indoor canal that you wait by for a boat to come through a tunnel to pick you up! When the boat arrived, I couldn’t find my email confirmation and the boat driver would not let us on the boat unless he could see it. Dang it! We had to go to front desk to have them resend me the email confirmation and then wait for the next boat which thankfully came every 15 minutes.
 
After a short 8-minute ride, we arrived at the private island and it was obvious there were two distinct sides; one for adults and one for families. The adult side has a beautiful secluded beach with gorgeous pink flamingos walking around freely and several over water cabanas for rent. It’s designed to be a romantic beach for lovers, so kids are only allowed to be on that side of the island from 9-10am each day. The boys were excited to see the flamingos and feed them! We grabbed some bird food and followed the flamingos around in the water to try to get them to come close to us. They didn’t seem very hungry (or didn’t enjoy being chased around), so the boys just fed some other pigeon-like birds instead. Regardless, we got some great shots with the flamingos in the stunning turquois blue water! This is definitely a must-see place in Aruba!
 
When our hour was up, we strolled along a sandy trail to the family friendly side of the island where we snagged a few beach chairs right in front of the water and the boys immediately grabbed their beach toys and started digging. Tyson and Marshall dug a ginormous hole that went below the water table which Tyson was super proud of. Meanwhile, I built lots of sandcastles and Wesley enjoyed stomping on each one. Haha!
 
There were free kayaks to rent and I thought it would be fun to take each boy out for a ride around the island. Wesley and I went out first and as soon as we paddled out it started to pour down rain. Go figure! We made our way to an over water cabana and hid under the dock until the rain let up. Luckily in Aruba the weather is bipolar, it pours down rain one minute and then it’s sunny and beautiful the next. We paddled near some mangroves to check out tons of pelicans in the trees and then headed back to the beach to let Wesley off. Tyson then hopped on and we pretty much did the same loop again.  I was surprised how sore my arms were after paddling the boys around for an hour. Definitely a great workout!
 
We were all getting hungry and when we ordered lunch our server told us our tickets came with lunch and an exotic cocktail. Score! We ordered some pizzas and salads along with some interesting drinks with cantaloupe juice in it. The boys even got fruit punch served in a fancy pink flamingo floaty cup. So fun!
 
After wrapping up lunch, the boys were ready to head back to our condo so they could…you guessed it, go down the water slide again. Right now these boys have a one-track mind! You’d think they’d get burnt out of doing the same thing over and over….and over. But nope!
 
We got all cleaned up for dinner and grabbed a taxi from the hotel lobby. I had read about the most photographed tree in Aruba called the Divi Divi tree and had to see what the hype was all about. We asked our taxi driver to stop at the tree on the way to dinner to take a picture. The taxi driver pointed to a tree by the beach so we ran over to it and snapped a few pictures. On the way back to the taxi I noticed several people taking pictures of a tree right next to the one we just took pictures of. Shoot, I think we took pictures of the wrong tree! Oh well, it still looks cool and nobody will know the difference (except you guys now that I just told you). Turns out, a lot of trees look the exact same along the water…we for sure looked like dumb tourist to our driver!
 
I had researched interesting restaurants to check out in the area and came across Wacky Wahoo’s. The first thing I noticed when we walked in was all the hilarious signs hanging around the room. My favorite was “BOOBS – the proof men can focus on two things at once.” Haha! The restaurant was completely booked with reservations for the evening, but they said we could wait at the bar and they’d seat us if a reservation didn’t show up. Tyson and Wesley grabbed a couple of barstools and we ordered some drinks while we waited. Apparently kids are allowed to sit at the bar in Aruba!? After about 15 minutes, a table was ready for us. Marshall ordered their famous barracuda dish and I ordered a chicken dish that I shared with the boys. I know you are all just so shocked at my dinner choice! The food was delicious but we made sure so save room for their yummy chocolate brownie for dessert! 
 
After returning to our hotel, the boys wanted to take a jetted bath in our room. We filled up the bath water just barely over the jets and then turned them on. After a really loud rumbling noise, the water started spraying EVERYWHERE! Wesley screamed and immediately jumped out of the bath while Tyson was just busting up laughing and enjoying the sprayfest. We quickly turned the jets off and filled up the tub with a whole lot more water. Then Tyson had a nice relaxing jetted bath all to himself while Wesley snuggled with us in bed before we all went to sleep.
 
The following morning, we went to a cute little nearby café for breakfast called The Coffee Table. Man, Aruba really has some creative restaurant names! We sat at, yup – a coffee table – and ordered a healthy breakfast and sweetened it up with some yummy drinks. The boys sipped on hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles and I had a caramel blended coffee drink. Yum!
 
We were hoping to take the boys rock climbing by the beach after breakfast, but apparently kids need to be over 8 years old. Bummer! I guess playing on the beach instead isn’t such a bad tradeoff. It was nice getting in a little more beach time in before packing up and heading to the airport.
 
Aruba is an awesome place for a family vacation with plenty of great beaches, restaurants and entertainment! We’d highly recommend it if you’re headed to the Caribbean.
 
Next stop: Curacao!