50 Fun Facts About Aruba

Which plant once covered two-thirds of Aruba and still appears on the island's coat of arms?

Aloe vera made Aruba the world's largest exporter of the plant after its introduction in 1840. The industry continues today on a smaller scale.

Aruba and Curaçao are the A and C of the Dutch Caribbean's ABC islands; which island is the B?

Bonaire, unlike its two self-governing neighbours, is a special municipality of the Netherlands itself.

Which country's coast lies just 29 kilometres south of Aruba and can be seen on a clear day?

Venezuela's Paraguaná Peninsula is the nearest land, and Aruba's refineries were built to process crude from that country's vast oil fields.

Aruba-born dancer Bobby Farrell was the male face of which 1970s disco group?

Boney M. put Farrell out front, but producer Frank Farian confirmed in 1978 that he, not Farrell, had sung the male parts on the records.

Aruba-born singer Dave Benton won the 2001 Eurovision Song Contest representing which country?

Estonia won with Benton, who had settled there in 1997 after meeting his Estonian wife on a cruise ship, singing alongside Tanel Padar.

Which Aruba landmark, once the island's most visited attraction, collapsed in September 2005?

Natural Bridge was a coral limestone arch some 30 metres long, the remnant of an ancient cave, and it featured in nearly every promotional flier.

Which hazard does Aruba largely escape because of its position far south in the Caribbean?

Hurricanes usually form and track to the north of Aruba, though two brushed the island in their early stages late in the 2020 season.

Which wind-bent tree, known in Aruba as watapana, grows pods long used for tanning leather?

Divi-divi rarely reaches its full nine-metre height, because the winds that batter exposed coasts contort its growth.

Which city, nicknamed Playa by locals, is the capital and largest settlement of Aruba?

Oranjestad means Orange Town in Dutch: the village on the bay was given the name in 1824, in honour of King William I of the House of Orange.

Which creole language, blending Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch, is the most widely spoken in Aruba?

Papiamento is spelled with a final o in Aruba but with a final u on the neighbouring islands, which chose a phonetic spelling instead.

Which currency, pegged to the dollar, did Aruba introduce in 1986 to replace the guilder?

Florin banknotes were redesigned in 1990 by Aruban artist Evelino Fingal, who drew on pre-Columbian pottery and animals unique to the island.

Which conical hill at the heart of Aruba, pictured on the coat of arms, is climbed by a concrete staircase?

Hooiberg, Dutch for haystack, rises 165 metres, and its staircase was built in 1951 so that the instruments on its summit could be maintained.

Which Aruba landmark is named after a steamship that was wrecked off the island in 1891?

California Lighthouse went up between 1914 and 1916 to prevent a repeat of the disaster, and the wooden steamer's wreck still lies in shallow water nearby.

Which stronghold, completed in 1798 and now a historical museum, is the oldest building in Aruba?

Fort Zoutman was named after a Dutch rear admiral who never visited Aruba, and it stood right on the shoreline when it was built.

Which metal did a 12-year-old herder discover in Aruba in 1824, setting off a rush?

Gold was found by Willem Rasmijn, three centuries after the Spanish had written the island off for its apparent lack of mineral wealth.

After Aruba's huge refinery closed in 1985, which industry grew into the island's largest?

Tourism was pushed hard after the closure, because the lost refinery had supplied half of all government revenue.

The freighter Antilla, now a wreck off Aruba, was scuttled in 1940 by its crew from which country?

Germany had invaded the Netherlands that same morning, and the crew used a delay in boarding to start sinking the ship rather than surrender her.

Which politician, honoured as the Libertador of Aruba, fell into a coma on the eve of separate status?

Betico Croes founded the People's Electoral Movement in 1971 and never regained consciousness to see the status he had won.

On 1 January 1986 Aruba broke away from which federation of Dutch Caribbean islands?

Netherlands Antilles had seemed dominated by Curaçao to many Arubans, and the federation itself was dissolved in 2010.

Aruba Dushi Tera, the national anthem of Aruba since 1976, is written in which musical form?

A waltz already popular in the 1950s, it kept its melody because the 1976 anthem committee advised against turning it into a march.

The two narrow stripes across the lower half of Aruba's national flag are which colour?

Yellow stands for the island's prosperity, past and present, and for local wildflowers such as the kibrahacha.

Aruba-born shortstop Xander Bogaerts won the World Series in 2013 and 2018 with which team?

Boston Red Sox scouts signed him at 16, and he went on to play more games at shortstop than anyone in the club's history.

Sarah-Quita Offringa of Aruba won back-to-back freestyle world titles in 2010 and 2011 in which sport?

Windsurfing also brought her the 2011 slalom world title, and with it a nomination for World Sailor of the Year.

Keshi yena, a classic dish of Aruba, is a hollowed ball of what, stuffed with spiced meat?

Cheese rinds are where it began: enslaved cooks are believed to have stuffed leftover shells of Gouda or Edam with scraps of meat.

Pastechi, a deep-fried breakfast snack sold across Aruba, is most similar to which Latin American food?

An empanada in all but name, the crescent-shaped pastechi has slightly sweetened dough and fillings that can include Indonesian chili paste.

Which national park, established in 2000, protects roughly a fifth of Aruba's land area?

Arikok takes its name from Arie Kok, who once owned a small plantation there; his adobe house still stands inside the park.

The cascabel, found only in Aruba and among the rarest of its kind, is what type of animal?

A rattlesnake confined to the dry southeastern half of the island, it may not be exported, and zoos now breed it in captivity.

The shoco, a subspecies that lives only in Aruba's dry scrubland, is what kind of bird?

A burrowing owl that nests in holes in the ground, the shoco shares the island's national park with the prikichi, Aruba's own parakeet.

Which kind of building, shipped from the Netherlands in pieces and rebuilt in 1961, is a restaurant landmark in Aruba?

A windmill first built in Groningen in 1815, De Olde Molen was taken apart, shipped across the Atlantic and reconstructed in Aruba.

Which form of transport in Aruba's capital, opened in 2012, is the Dutch Caribbean's only passenger rail line?

A streetcar line run with heritage-style single- and double-deck cars, it was laid as part of a project to revive the main shopping streets.

Which town, the oldest in Aruba, served as the island's seat of government until the late 1790s?

Savaneta still holds the island's oldest surviving house, a mud-walled cas di torto, and the Dutch marine barracks at Commander's Bay.

Which stretch of sand in Aruba, lined with low-rise resorts, is the widest on the island?

Eagle Beach, also called Arend Beach, has soft white sand and has been rated one of the best in the world.

Aruba's international airport is named after which Dutch queen, who reigned from 1980 to 2013?

Beatrix was a 17-year-old princess when the airport took her name during a royal visit in 1955; it was later the hub of the island's own carrier, Air Aruba.

Passengers leaving Aruba's airport can clear customs and immigration for which country before they board?

United States border officers work inside the terminal in Aruba, so cleared passengers land in America as domestic arrivals and skip the queues there.

Dera Gai, the St John's Day harvest festival in Aruba, traditionally centred on the burial of which animal?

A rooster was buried up to its neck as a target for blindfolded revellers; today a plastic bird or a calabash gourd takes its place.

Dande groups in Aruba sing at the homes of friends and family to welcome which occasion?

The New Year is greeted by dande singers whose host passes round a hat for money; the name comes from a word meaning to revel.

Spanish colonisers gave Aruba and its neighbours which dismissive label for their apparent lack of mineral wealth?

Useless islands, or islas inútiles, was the verdict by 1513; within two years most inhabitants had been shipped to Hispaniola as forced labour.

Which Arawak-speaking people were living in Aruba when Europeans first reached the region around 1500?

Caquetío migrants crossed from the mainland between 850 and 1000 AD, bringing pottery and farming to the island.

Which country seized Aruba during the Napoleonic Wars and handed it back to the Dutch in 1816?

Britain returned the island under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814, and the years of occupation helped English take root there.

Which Beach Boys hit from the 1988 film Cocktail name-checks Aruba, Jamaica and Bermuda as getaways?

Kokomo itself is a fictional place, set somewhere off the Florida Keys, unlike the real destinations the song compares it to.

Under the Köppen system, Aruba has which climate type, unusual among Caribbean islands?

Hot semi-arid conditions bring only about 500 millimetres of rain a year, so the landscape is one of cacti and thorny scrub.

Which Dutch tradition do people in Aruba celebrate on 5 and 6 December, weeks before Christmas?

Sinterklaas, the feast of Saint Nicholas, shares Aruba's calendar with Halloween and Thanksgiving, which arrived later with overseas visitors.

Geologically, Aruba sits on the continental shelf of which larger landmass, despite its Caribbean setting?

South America is so close that stone tools found on the island may have been left by visitors from the mainland before anyone settled.

In the creole spoken across Aruba, the everyday word danki, borrowed from Dutch, means what?

Thank you is dank je in Dutch, a loan that sits beside greetings such as bon dia, good morning, from the creole's Portuguese and Spanish side.

The word dushi in the title of Aruba's national anthem, Aruba Dushi Tera, translates as what?

Sweet is the literal meaning, though the anthem's title is also rendered in English as Aruba, lovely country.

About three-quarters of Aruba's population follows which branch of Christianity, despite centuries of Dutch rule?

Catholicism took hold through missionaries from the mainland, one of whom built the first chapel at Alto Vista in 1750.

On 27 April, Aruba joins the Netherlands in celebrating which national holiday?

King's Day, Dia di Rey in the local creole, honours the Dutch monarch, who remains head of state of Aruba and is represented on the island by a governor.

Aruba's Lago refinery, once among the largest in the world, was a subsidiary of which petroleum giant?

Standard Oil of Indiana bought Lago in 1928 and soon sold it to Standard Oil of New Jersey, later Exxon, which shut the plant and its company town, Lago Colony, in 1985.

Under the 1986 deal that made Aruba a separate country, what was scheduled for 1996 but later shelved?

Full independence was postponed indefinitely at The Hague in 1990, and the clause that scheduled it was struck out in 1995.

Small tankers once carried crude to Aruba's Lago refinery from beneath which large lake?

Maracaibo's channel was too shallow for ocean-going ships, so a fleet of lake tankers shuttled the crude to Aruba for transshipment.