Feb 11

Feb 11 Aruba for the First Time Again

Writer's Corner, 2020

“Ursula!” I yell when I walk into the reception at the new Azure Beach Residences and receive a giant hug from my favorite Guest Relations Specialist.

^{— By Amie Watson
— Photography: Kenneth Theysen}

We’ve just arrived on Aruba, my travel companion and I, and it’s her first time on Aruba. Ursula greets her with just as big a hug. We’ve picked up our rental car and driven through the pink and pastel fairy tale of harborside Oranjestad to our suite at Azure Beach Residences, between the low-rise and high-rise hotel areas on Aruba’s west coast.

It’s not my first time on Aruba. Ursula has sent me on exceptional snorkeling tours and helped me hunt down locally made gifts before, hence I trust her blindly. She’s also the warm welcome that means we’ve truly arrived. After the long, cold plane ride, we toss off shoes and sweaters for sandals and sunglasses. And like many recent arrivals, we head to the beach.

The sun is just starting to think about setting as we walk to Hadicurari Restaurant along the blissfully warm sand. “I’ve never seen the sun so defined, almost like a moon,” says my travel buddy. “It’s amazing!” The free show that she’s enjoying happens nightly here: the sun slipping quickly into a pastel horizon of gently lapping waves. And while I’ve seen it many times before, experiencing it through her eyes feels like seeing it again for the first time.

At Hadicurari on Palm Beach, our table is directly on the beach and closest to the water. (Chef Nando said he’d “hook us up,” but there really isn’t a bad table with a panoramic view like this.) Our royal blue napkins keep trying to fly off our laps into the ocean, and, admittedly, we’d like to join them. Instead, we settle in with our toes in the sand and a bowl of grouper ceviche and an Aruba Ariba cocktail between us.

After dinner, a peach and amber sky above us, we walk along the edge of crystal blue water, sandals in hand, listening to live musicians at MooMba groove to Camila Cabello’s “Havana” as visitors sip frozen daiquiris and piña coladas on the beach bar’s dance floor.

But my first-timer friend is avoiding getting her feet wet. “It’s probably cold,” she says, hesitant after years in colder climes. I smile and encourage her to test it out. When the warm water surges around her ankles, her eyes light up, like those of a child opening a much-wanted birthday present.

“It’s always this warm!” I say, laughing. And she laughs, too, because we’re probably the luckiest people in the world – just as lucky as every other person on Aruba, a welcoming, safe Caribbean country with 365 days of sunshine, hot temperatures, a cooling trade wind, potable water and impeccable, coral-cleaned beaches.

I’d almost forgotten how novel that warm water is the first time you feel it. The way you don’t believe it’s real at first. Then, too soon, you stop appreciating the beautiful sunsets and warm water. The trick is to keep the magic once you know that every day will be another day in paradise.

There’s a cracking sound as a butterfly breaks free from its pupa casing. I learn this a few days later at the early-morning hatching at The Butterfly Farm. Every day, visitors gather to watch the long metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a brightly colored butterfly come to an end for a handful of butterflies at the farm. They need heat, warmth and humidity to transform, making Aruba a good place to call home. Once released from their sticky casing, they literally hang out for a while to dry off, then immediately start looking for a drink and a mate, skipping all those awkward, low-proof adolescent years.

It sounds like a brilliant life plan. So that will be our goal this trip, to be like the butterflies, to wake up each day into a new world, get wet, dry off, hang out, eat, drink, etc. We’ll visit much-loved places as though for the first time and discover a few new ones. We’ll snorkel at Baby Beach, learn to work with flame at a glass bead-making workshop at Terrafuse, drink rum cocktails and mango smoothies, shop at local artisan market Cosecha and, of course, eat the best of the island, which is really what we’re here for.

Our best meals are summed up throughout the magazine, including exceptional beef tenderloin, grilled shrimp and Caribbean ceviche at Madame Janette; heaping plates of fresh snapper at Water’s Edge accompanied by live Aruban dancing; addictive Chinese five-spice pork belly and seared tuna at Lobby Restaurant; and an over-the-top, multi-course, chef’s table dinner with wine pairings at 2 Fools and a Bull.

“This was one of the top meals of my life!” said my travel companion a few days later, after finally bidding goodnight to the other diners still lounging on sofas behind the 2 Fools location.

At that moment, I stopped in my tracks and smiled, because I’d accomplished my real goal without knowing that it was a goal at all. I’d made someone else fall in love with Aruba the same way I had. And seeing it through her eyes made me fall in love with the country all over again.