a week of drives in aruba

The northern tip is the classic half-day. The California Lighthouse sits on the high ground at the top of the island with the best long view you will get without a boat, and the road up is paved the whole way. Nearby, the Alto Vista chapel is small, bright yellow and genuinely worth the detour, reached on a winding paved lane lined with white crosses.

From there the road east along the north coast takes you to the Bushiribana gold mill ruins and the Natural Bridge area, where the sea comes in hard against the rocks and the wind is constant. This is the dramatic side of the island and the opposite of the sheltered hotel beaches.

Go in the morning. There is very little shade at any of these stops and the middle of the day is punishing.

Drive the length of the island to San Nicolas, which has been quietly turned into an open-air street art town: large murals across whole building faces, best seen on foot once you have parked. It is a completely different Aruba from the hotel strip and it is the reason a lot of people say afterwards that the car was worth it.

Just beyond, at the southern tip, Baby Beach is a shallow protected lagoon that stays calm and waist-deep a long way out. It is the obvious choice with small children and it is reachable on paved road all the way.

Allow a full day for the pair, with lunch in San Nicolas. It is around an hour each way from the Palm Beach hotels at a relaxed pace.

Oranjestad rewards a morning: the Dutch colonial frontages, the harbour, and the shops and cafés around the main streets. Park once and walk. The streets in the centre are one-way in places and hunting for a space repeatedly is a bad use of a holiday.

Arikok National Park sits in the middle of the island and is worth the entry fee for the caves and coastline alone, all of which are reachable without leaving surfaced ground. The unpaved interior tracks and the Natural Pool are a separate proposition and are covered in their own guide.

Between them, the west coast beaches are strung along a single road: Palm Beach for the busy end, Eagle Beach for the wide open one with the divi divi trees, Manchebo and Druif quieter again as you go south.

A workable plan is one morning north, one full day south, one morning in Oranjestad, one day in Arikok, and the rest of the week on whichever beach you have decided is yours. That leaves slack for the day it rains or the day nobody wants to move.

Fuel up before the north and interior days rather than after. Stations thin out considerably away from the main west-coast corridor.

And park thoughtfully at the quieter stops. Beach and trailhead car parks are informal and unsurfaced, and a car that visibly contains nothing is the one nobody bothers with.