10 Money Saving Tips for Aruba

Aruba is a small Caribbean island nation that’s located just off the north coast of Venezuela. It’s a very popular beach vacation destination, especially for Americans, due to its gorgeous dream-like aquamarine seas and powdery white sand beaches.

Aruba is a very expensive country. Visitors should expect to pay double or triple US prices on just about everything. That includes restaurants & bars, groceries & alcohol, rental vehicles & gasoline and most accommodation.

Therefore, Aruba is primarily a luxury vacation destination with dozens of 5-stary and 4-star beachfront luxury hotels, upscale restaurants. casinos and very expensive drinking establishments.

Mid-range travelers can potentially afford a short vacation in Aruba, particularly if they rent out a private apartment or AirBnB room in one of the island’s many residential areas. There’s also Holiday Inn and a few other 3-4 star mid-range beachside hotels.

As for budget travelers, not surprsingly, Aruba is not really a budget travel destination. In fact, the only way a budget traveler could possibly afford to visit would be to eliminate accommodation costs entirely by house-sitting, pet-sitting or finding a volunteer position, like I did.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many – if any – of those situations on offer online. I’ve searched all the volunteer help-exchange websites and all the house & pet-sitting websites I know without finding a single listing for ARuba.

Most likely, hopeful budget travelers would have to land such a gig by word-of-mouth. I was extremely fortunate to find a 2-month cat-sitting gig through a friend of a friend, who contacted me this year out of the clear blue.

Luxury vacationers probably won’t be looking for ways to cut costs on their trip to Aruba. But mid-range travelers and the odd budget traveler who makes their way here might really appreciate some cost-cutting tips while staying on Aruba.

So I’ve compiled this article, being a budget traveler on Aruba. It’s based on six weeks of staying on the island thus far. I hope these insights will help other money-conscious travelers planning to visit the gorgeous island of Aruba.

Preparing to Visit Aruba

1. Bring all personal items you’ll need with you

If you’re a traveler on a budget, Aruba is not the place where you want to end up buying neccessities because you ran out or forgot to bring them.

It’s not a matter of Aruba not having those things for sale. Aruba is a modern country with huge supermarkets, shopping malls, tons of small privately-owned groceries and many major international product brands. So if you do run out of something in Aruba you can certainly find it there.

But it will cost you a lot. You can expect to pay 2-3 times the US prices for any kind of personal items, clothes, shoes, toiletries and so on.

The best thing to do is make sure you take everything with you that you will need for the duration of your stay in Aruba. That goes for all toiletries, beach neccessities, clothes & shoes, outdoor needs and anything else you can think of. If you’re running low on anything before your trip, it will definitely be considerably cheaper to buy it at home and carry it with you than to end up buying it in Aruba.

Some things really necessary in Aruba that you might forget about include sunscreens, after-sun skin care, an umbrella (for sun and/or rain), mosquito spray or coils, electrolytes, flip-flops, snorkeling gear and a sarong or towel for the beach.

Before I headed to Aruba I remembered at the last minute to go buy mosquito spray and extra sunscreen. Man oh man, am I glad I bought them in the US before flying to Aruba! At supermarkets in Aruba I noticed, for instance, that a bottle of sunscreen costs $20-25 US! Yeeeooow!

2. Bring your own alcohol with you

If you plan on drinking during your visit to Aruba, be sure to take as much of your desired alcohol with you as you can. Alcohol is extremely expensive on the island.

I noted, for instance, that 1 liter bottle of Absolute Vodka costs about $40 US and a 750ml bottle of Bacardi Rum costs about $30 US! That’s about double the price I’d pay in the US.

Cocktails at bars & restaurants in Aruba are equally expensive. A single ordinary cocktail costs $10-15 US or more.

Once again, I was very very happy that I bought a liter of rum in Florida (for about $15 US) to take with me to Aruba. I’m not a big drinker, so that single bottle is lasting me for two months. If it runs out before my departure from Aruba, I definitely will not be buying any more here in Aruba!

3. Bring specialty food & drink items with you

If you’re on a budget for your visit to Aruba, you’ll be much better off having a kitchen, buying groceries and cooking for yourself. Restaurants are incredibly expensive.

Groceries and fresh produce are also rather expensive, though, often costing 2-3 times the prices in the US.

Obviously you can’t take all the food with you that you’ll need to eat, nor can you readily carry fresh produce or meat/fish/dairy products. So to some extent, you’ll just have to deal with Aruba’s high grocery prices.

But if you have any specialty food/drink items or particular brands that you don’t want to do without, then consider buying them at home and carrying them with you. You may or may not find them on Aruba, but if you do, you can be sure they will cost a lot more.

Some things to consider taking are specialty coffee, top quality chocolates, favorite spices, particular cheeses or other non-perishibles.

Aruba’s huge supermarkets do stock a surprsingly fantastic variety of name-brand foods & beverages. So you can most likely find your favorites.

Some food items that do have reasonable prices in Aruba include all sorts of breads, a variety of cheeses, pastas, rices and potatoes. These things are slightly more expensive than in the US, but not double or triple price.

Saving Money in Aruba on Food & Beverages

1. Drink tap water

Tap water is potable in Aruba and all locals drink it. Visitors can too. All water on Aruba is processed at a huge water desalination plant. Water intended for drinking is further purified by modern UV techniques.

Drinking tap water is an excellent way to save a lot of money in Aruba, especially since bottled water is very expensive.

2. Get accommodation with a kitchen/cooking facilities

As already noted, restaurants in Aruba are extremely expensive. One of the biggest money-saving techniques you can use in Aruba is to make sure you have a kitchen so you can cook your own food. To this end, search for AirBnb places, Booking and vacation apartment rentals.

3. Buy groceries and cook your meals

Hand in hand with finding a kitchen to use, of course, is to buy groceries and cook your own meals.

Saving Money on Activities in Aruba

With Aruba’s many stunning beaches, various natural outdoor sites and a few cultural options, it would be quite reasonable to fill your days in Aruba without spending any money at all on various activities. The only thing that could hold you back is transportation. Eventhough Aruba is a tiny island, the many beaches and natural sites are quite spread out, requiring some sort of transportation.

Car rentals and gasoline prices are very expensive. Public buses do exist but have limited routes and do not reach most natural sites. If you can rent a car, know someone else who has a vehicle, or perhaps hitch-hike, you’ll be able to do a lot more things, even on a limited budget.

1. Stay in accommodation near a beach

If you have a limited budget, the best thing to you can do is stay in accommodation on or near a beach. Aruba’s biggest draw is its stunning powdery white sand beaches. If you can do nothing else in Aruba, you can certainly enjoy the fantastic beaches.

Be sure to stay on a beach or at least within short walking distance of a beach. Then every day you’ll have the chance to watch sunrises & sunsets, go swimming, suntan, relax on the sand, walk or jog along the beautiful shores, and any other beach activities you enjoy. That could easily fill up a 1-2 week trip to Aruba.

If you have your own snorkeling gear to take with you to Aruba, you can snorkel at many beaches by simply walking in from shore. In many places, you might only be snorkeling over sea grasses, which certainly isn’t as exciting as a coral reef, but there are a surprising number of fish species and other marine creatures to be spotted.

If you’re close enough to Arashi and Beaches in northern Aruba, you can snorkel on coral reefs just offshore. In addition, public buses run regularly between Oranjestad – Palm Beach – Arashi Beach, so you could catch a bus to/from there for snorkeling.

Once you’re at a beach, at most places on Aruba’s west coast, you’ll be able to walk for miles in either direction along the water’s edge and/or sidewalks just behind the beach.

2. Stay within walking distance of your accommodation

If you don’t have any transportation, then check out places that are within walking distance of your accommodation. Besides the beaches, there are bound to be some large tracts of tall cactus scrub with walking trails, some inland salt water pools and perhaps other interesting natural spots.

3. Take advantage of free things to see & do in Aruba

If you have transportation then you can see a whole slew of beautiful natural places all over the island. They include rock formations, cactus scrub regions, inland waterways, the rugged west coast , cliffs in the south and various walking trails. I wrote all about Aruba’s natural places in this article.

In addtion to Aruba’s many wonderful natural places, downtown Oranjestad has several gorgeous historic buildings, a marina Math huge cruise ships docked and the free Archaeological Museum. Public buses run regularly to/from Oranjstad and various main destinations around the island. So no matter where you’re staying, you can catch a bus into town to check out the sites, all for free. It’s a great way to spend a half day or full day in Aruba.

I’ll be writing another article about free things to do in Aruba next week, so stay tuned!

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You might also enjoy:

My Introduction to Aruba

Natural Aruba: Natural Sites around the Island

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