Life's a Beach, So Live It Up on Aruba's BEST Beach -- Eagle Beach!
Written: Jul 21 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Uncrowded and free of crass commercialism
Cons: Makes me cry to have to leave!
The Bottom Line: Soft, powdery white sand leading up to crystal clear turqoise waters. No fantasy! It's Eagle Beach...
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| mrkstvns's Full Review: Eagle Beach |
Aruba is all about fun in the sun. It's about swimming. It's about snorkling. It's about scuba diving. It's about tan maintenance. It's about strolling along stunningly beautiful soft white sandy beaches as the warm, crystal clear waters lap at your feet.
Any fantasy you've ever had about what a tropical beach should be, is probably reality almost anywhere in the Caribbean, but certainly the beaches on Aruba are spectacular. The island is blessed with some very different kinds of beaches, so there's truly something for everyone. If you really like rough, rugged, rocky beaches, you can find them on Aruba -- they're along the seaward side of the island, and some of them boast fascinating natural rock formations, like tunnels and bridges, formed by the constant erosion of beating waves over thousands of years.
If you're like most people though, you want the beaches that are along the sheltered side of the island -- the side that faces southwest towards the Venezuelan coast. The beaches on this side of the island are classic Caribbean beaches. Towering palms lend some shade to sunbathers and beach bums who enjoy lying on the sun warmed, powdery soft white sands. These beaches are very different from those along the coasts in the United States. The sands are much softer for one thing -- in fact, it can almost feel like you're walking in flour at times. The sand is very fine, and I'm told that it's not formed from erosion of rocks, but from the erosion of coral reefs, and the difference in raw material is what makes all the difference in the world in the visual beauty of the beach (the bright whiteness) and in the tactile beauty (the cool softness).
Sand alone is only part of the equation. Caribbean beaches are also wonderful places because the waters are brilliantly clean and clear and they take on a bright turqoise green color from the underlying white sands. The waters are wonderful for swimming -- so warm that you'd willingly give up hot tubs forever if you could just stay in the waters a little bit longer...
In Aruba, the quintessential Caribbean beach is Eagle Beach. Accept no substitutes.
Eagle Beach is better than neighboring beaches (namely the hotel-lined Palm Bean to the north and the smaller Manchebo Beach to the south) because it's got a wide-open feel to it. It's more like a park and a natural beach than neighboring beaches.
That doesn't mean the place is dead -- far from it. The road runs right past Eagle Beach and a large parking lot (room for about 200 cars) is convenient and free (the most seductive word in the English language, don't you think?) There are bus stops along Eagle Beach, so if you're staying elsewhere on the island, it's easy to get to this beach even without a rental car. There are also plenty of excellent hotels around Eagle Beach, but all of them are set back from the beach on the other side of the road -- this is what makes Eagle Beach sooooooo much better than Palm Beach.
There are no built-in palapas on Eagle Beach. No fishing piers. No dumpy restaurants or bars. It's just you and the sand and the gently lapping waters...
Most of the hotels on Eagle Beach are low-rise hotels (under 4 stories). That doesn't mean they're small though. In fact, the largest hotel (over 800 rooms) on Aruba is La Cabana, and it faces out onto Eagle Beach. It's also a very clean looking, modern hotel, and I think most travelers who truly love beaches would be hard pressed to find a better location to hang their straw hat at night.
Before heading out to Aruba, I'd visited a few web sites to get a few recommendations on things to see and do. One site called Baby Beach "the best beach on Aruba". If you happen to bump into that site, don't believe their advice! Baby Beach does have placid waters, but it's in a terrible location on the southern point of the island -- an area dominated by the enormous oil refineries of the Coastal Corporation (I swear those refineries make the industrial neighborhoods of southeast Houston look like green pastures!). If your idea of a "good" swimming beach includes fine vistas of massive storage tanks, refractor towers, and transiting oil tankers, then by all means, waste your time driving down to Baby Beach. Ditto Rodger's Beach -- leave it to the roughnecks working in San Nicolas.
What to Do on Eagle Beach...
Besides the obvious attraction of just kicking back and relaxing, there are plenty of watersports available on every beach in Aruba. While the big hotel crowds that fill Palm Beach might make that area the most competitive in terms of sheer number of recreational opportunities, there's no shortage of activities on Eagle Beach.
It seems to me that the breeze never dies down completely in Aruba, and those steady winds make the beaches wonderful places for the windsurfers, who ride their boards pretty much everywhere from Oranjestad on up to the northern tip of the island. One of the freebie island guides that was thrust into my hands as I made my way out of the Queen Beatrix Airport had an article about windsurfing in Aruba and the reasons why so many top-ranked windsurfers prefer the island over all others. The article claimed that Eagle Beach used to be the island's undisputed top spot for windsurfing, but that when La Cabana was built, it blocked some of the wind and so the windsurfers moved up the beach, just north of the Marriott and the Holiday Inn.
When I was at Eagle Beach, there were a few people with boats for banana boat rides or waterskiing, but nowhere near the number of entrepreneurs that you find clustered around the hotels on Palm Beach. In my opinion, if you've really got your heart set on renting a jet ski, doing some waterskiing, or floating along the beach on a parasail, then your best bet will be to hang around Palm Beach (everything from the Wyndham northwards to the Marriott) -- there will be more boats, jet skis and hucksters than you could ever imagine!
The fact that Palm Beach is the louder, busier beach is part of the magic of Eagle Beach. Eagle Beach is not dead -- not by any stretch of the imagination -- it's just sane. And clean. And beautiful. And the best darn beach on Aruba!
Until next time, see you on the road. As always, look for me out on the beach. I'll be slyly camoflaged in my bright red flowered Hawaiian shirt holding a frosty coco loco in my hand -- bet you don't spot me!
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Dec - Feb
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