driving in aruba

You drive on the right. Distances and speed limits are metric, generally around 40 to 60 kilometres per hour in built-up areas and up to 80 on open road. Seat belts are required. The island is roughly twenty miles by six, so almost nothing is more than half an hour away and a wrong turn is a minor inconvenience rather than a lost afternoon.

Roundabouts are common and traffic already in the circle has priority. If you are used to signalling out of a roundabout, keep doing it; local practice is variable and being predictable is worth more than being correct.

Effectively every rental car on the island is an automatic, so if you have never driven a manual this is not a place where that will be a problem.

The dark. Outside Oranjestad and the hotel strips, roads are unlit, and the interior has no street lighting whatsoever. A route that felt trivial at four in the afternoon is a genuinely different drive at nine at night, particularly on the roads toward the north coast. Give yourself more time than the distance suggests.

The animals. In the countryside you will meet goats standing in the middle of the road with no intention of moving, and occasionally Aruba's wild donkeys doing the same. They are not startled by horns. Slow down and go around.

The one-way streets in central Oranjestad, which are not always obvious to a visitor and which combine badly with looking for a parking space. And the late-afternoon traffic on the road past the airport, which is short but real: allow an extra twenty minutes if you are returning a car then.

Fuel is sold by the litre and stations are common around Oranjestad, the hotel strips and the main roads. They are far sparser in the interior and toward the north, so top up before a day of exploring rather than after.

Parking at the beaches is mostly informal and unsurfaced. This is the one place a little ground clearance is genuinely useful, and it is also the reason to leave nothing visible in the car. A boot that closes over your bags is worth more here than a larger engine.

In Oranjestad there is paid parking as well as free street parking further out. Read the signage; the tourist-heavy areas are the ones that are actually enforced.

The main north to south road runs the length of the island and gets you between Oranjestad, the hotel strips and San Nicolas without difficulty. Signage to the major landmarks is decent, and phone navigation works fine.

From the airport it is roughly ten minutes to Oranjestad and Eagle Beach, and fifteen to twenty to the Palm Beach hotels. Those numbers stretch in the late afternoon.

If you are driving anywhere unpaved, stop and read the section of your rental agreement about it first. In Aruba that clause is not decorative.