Aruba

Aruba is an island in the Caribbean Sea.

It is close to South America. The weather is warm all year. The capital city is Oranjestad.

Aruba is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, about 29 kilometers north of Venezuela and 80 kilometers northwest of Curaçao. It is 32 kilometers long and only 10 kilometers across at its widest.

Aruba is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It runs its own affairs, such as its laws and its money, the Aruban florin, while the Kingdom handles defense and relations with other countries. Dutch and Papiamento are the official languages, and the capital is Oranjestad.

Britannica places Aruba southwest of the Lesser Antilles, some 80 km northwest of Curaçao and 29 km north of Venezuela's Paraguaná Peninsula. It was part of the Netherlands Antilles until 1986, when it became a separate self-governing part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. A governor appointed by the Dutch crown represents the monarch; a prime minister heads the Council of Ministers, which answers to the 21-member Staten (parliament).

The Aruba Tourism Authority describes the arrangement plainly: the Kingdom controls foreign affairs and defense, while laws, policies and the currency are Aruba's own. The Aruban florin is pegged to the US dollar. The 2020 census counted 108,166 people, and the statistics office's estimate for the end of 2024 was 108,423.

Oranjestad is the capital and main port.

Its buildings are painted pink, yellow and white. Big ships come to its harbor. A national park covers part of the island.

Oranjestad, on the southwest coast, is the capital and the main port. The photo, taken from the cruise-ship harbor, shows its pink, yellow and white buildings with red roofs, palm trees and low hills behind.

San Nicolas, near the southeastern tip, is where oil refining began in the 1920s. Nearly a fifth of the island is Arikok National Park, with caves, old rock drawings, rocky hills and quiet bays such as Boca Prins and Dos Playa.

Oranjestad is the capital and main port; its two census regions held 28,658 people in 2020. San Nicolas (Sint Nicolaas), in the southeast, was the port where oil refining began in the 1920s.

The Aruba Tourism Authority says nearly 20% of the island is national park. Arikok National Park covers 7,907 acres of caves, Indigenous rock drawings and land formations of lava, quartz diorite and limestone, with dry riverbeds leading to bays such as Moro, Boca Prins and Dos Playa. Rock drawings can also be seen at Fontein Cave in the park and at the Ayo Rock Formation.

Aruba is warm and dry.

A steady wind blows from the sea. Cactuses and tough shrubs grow. Some giant rocks are piled on top of each other.

Aruba is mostly low, with a few steep hills. The highest point is Mount Jamanota, 188 meters high, and a pointed hill called the Hooiberg, or Haystack, rises to 171 meters. In some places, huge boulders sit piled on top of one another.

The temperature stays near 27 °C all year, and the trade winds from the northeast keep it from feeling too hot. Only about 430 millimeters of rain falls in a year, and the plants that grow wild are cactuses, shrubs and trees that can survive drought. Aruba lies outside the usual path of hurricanes, though one sometimes reaches it.

Britannica describes an island of igneous rock overlain by limestone, fringed with coral reefs, with steep isolated hills such as the Hooiberg (171 m) and immense monolithic diorite boulders stacked in places. Mount Jamanota is 188 m in Wikidata and 189 m in Britannica. The soil is barren with little or no natural irrigation.

The annual average temperature is 27 °C, tempered by northeasterly trade winds; precipitation is low and variable, about 430 mm a year, and natural vegetation is drought-resistant cacti, shrubs and trees. Aruba lies outside the usual hurricane path. With no natural freshwater sources such as groundwater, rivers or lakes, the island's utility, WEB Aruba, makes drinking water by desalinating seawater; it has produced the island's water since 1932.

A small owl lives in holes in the ground. Arubans call it the shoco.

Sea turtles come to the beaches to lay eggs.

Aruba has its own kind of burrowing owl, called the shoco, that lives nowhere else. It is the island's national symbol. People have reported owls near schools and sports fields, but cutting down trees and fast building work are the biggest dangers to their homes and nests.

Four kinds of sea turtles, the hawksbill, loggerhead, green and leatherback, come ashore from March to December to lay eggs. Laws protect them and their nests, and people are asked to keep their distance from a nesting turtle. The animal photos here were taken in other places.

The shoco (Athene cunicularia arubensis), a burrowing owl found only on Aruba, is the island's national symbol. In a citizen-science survey run by the Department of Nature and Environment, residents sent 87 reports from 2020 to 2026; pairs were the most common sighting (38% of reports), and owls were increasingly seen near urban areas such as schools and sports fields. The department names deforestation and fast construction as the greatest threats to its habitat, along with disturbance and destroyed nests.

The department says four sea turtle species, hawksbill, loggerhead, green and leatherback, come ashore from March to December to nest, and that local and international laws protect turtles and nests; the TurtugAruba Foundation monitors nesting. The burrowing owl photo was taken in California and the turtle photos elsewhere.

Arubans speak Papiamento and Dutch.

Many also speak English and Spanish. Carnival is a big, colorful celebration.

Many Arubans have mixed family roots, including Indigenous, Dutch, Spanish and African ancestors. The official languages are Dutch and Papiamento, a language that grew mainly from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch. English and Spanish are widely spoken too.

New Year's Day and Carnival, before Lent, are especially colorful celebrations. Tourism is the largest industry, and visitors come for the long white beaches and clear water. Drinking water is made from seawater in a desalination plant.

Britannica describes most Arubans as ethnically mixed, many with Indigenous ancestry combined with Dutch, Spanish and African heritage, and notes that Aruba had few slave-based plantations compared with most Caribbean islands. Papiamento (Papiamentu), also spoken on Curaçao and Bonaire, is a creole that grew mainly from Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch; it and Dutch are official, and English and Spanish are widely used.

Services, centered on tourism, form the basis of the economy. The Aruba Tourism Authority dates tourism's growth from the 1950s and says it became the largest industry in the 1990s. Britannica singles out the pre-Lenten Carnival and New Year's festivities as especially colorful and popular celebrations.