Aruba Basic Guide: My $250 Total Trip to Aruba

Needless to say that “my $250 Trip to Aruba” title is going to get some eyebrows raised but the actual cost is a little less than that.  Yes, our net cost included flight, hotel, food, etc. You probably would spend more but I’m frugal so I spend what I spend and you do you. Now, having said that, here is the detail:

Visa Fee: $0

There is no visa requirement for US Citizens. Green card will also waive visa requirement. Our Aruba trip mainly manifested because of this reason.

I strongly suggest filling out Embarkation and Disembarkation (ED) form online. You can also do it on paper during your flight but why not fill it the night before at the comfort of your home? Typos and errors can be also be corrected after online submission.

Plane Ticket: Roughly $120

Southwest has direct flights to Aruba (Queen Beatrix International Airport, AUA) from Fort Lauderdale (FLL), and Baltimore (BWI). You can check current list in this official route map.

Southwest was my preferred airline because I have Companion Pass (CP) which essentially means I only had to pay tax on the second ticket. Fortunately, the tax for flying directly to Aruba is is mere $5.6. The tax of flying back to FLL is $54.11.

Initially when I wrote this report I did not consider points used as cash. I probably should have since Southwest points can be used to buy Amazon giftcard which a little less valuable than cash, but at least its something close to cash.

How did I have the points? Once upon a time I had transferred 90k SPG points (thanks SPG 35k offer on Personal and Business cards) to Marriott at 1:3 rate and used 180k points to buy a Flight + Hotel package while choosing Southwest as my flight choice. Back then points obtained through Flight + Hotel could be used to get a CP.

Hotel Room: $0?

I booked Ritz-Carlton Aruba for two nights. No upgrade was provided. Since I paid with certificates, it cost me no money to stay at Ritz-Carlton Aruba.

How did I book the room? I used two night certificates obtained through Chase Ritz-Carlton credit card. RC card signup bonus offers certificate that allows one to book Ritz hotels of up to category 4 and fortunately for us Ritz Aruba is exactly at 4.

Transportation: $88

You’ll see rental companies right as you exist the airport. They’re right across the street from the airport and it less than a minute to get to most of them.

$30/night economy rental in ArubaI booked a rental car for the entire duration at $30/24 hour rate. It cost $30 per 24 hours which turned out to be $74.19 after tax. The charge was put on a credit card providing primary insurance while renting abroad. We probably could have saved a little by refilling gas on our own but we let rental company charge us for not returning full tank car. Overall our bill came out to be $88.08.

Because of personal reasons I did not have the option to book rental early, but if I did, I probably could have taken my time to book through Thank You, Ultimate Rewards, Altitude Reserve portal at 1.25, 1.25/1.5, and 1.5 cpp and saved a little bit more money.

If I was travelling alone, I might have opted into booking with a transportation bus. A round-trip service to most hotels is avaiable (Ritz qualifies) and will cost $20/person. Additionally, booking a tour bus to popular destinations costs around $40/person. There are several companies who run tour buses so google for the one that best suits you. Most of the tour bus trip lasts for 3-4 hours and covers popular destinations like California lighthouse, natural bridge, Casiberi Rock formation, and more.

Phone, Data, GPS: $0

Data and GPS is of great help when travelling and driving abroad. Fortunately because of apps like Waze and Google Maps you don’t need a standalone GPS device anymore. Waze is often more convenient but I thought it occasionally gave longer routes while travelling in Aruba.

As far as data cost goes – T-Mobile had me covered. The 55+ plan (like most plans) from T-Mobile qualifies for free data in Aruba. I also had Project Fi as a backup phone.

The other alternative I had in mind was local SIM (from SETAR). If I recall correctly they had 600 MB plan for $6. I tried to buy one from the airport but they had no SIM left.

Another alternative was downloading local map. The entire google map of Aruba took about 10-11 MB and was downloaded within a matter of minutes. I did this at AUA airport which had free Wi-Fi.

The last option was a physical map which I did pickup at car rental company.

Due to technical issues in our end we initially had to use the physical map. We were told to more or less follow the coastal road and that the Ritz-Carlton was the last hotel on the road and is hard to miss. Unfortunately, at some point we ended up taking a inner route but getting back on track was fairly easy.

Food – $12.61

I had some food with me but we exclusively dined at Ritz-Carlton Aruba. Yes, this hotel is expensive but we had stay credit and we used it towards in-room dining.

If I had paid more attention to the cost, I could have easily remained within the limits of my stay credit and thus paid $0 for food.

You can read more about this in my review of Ritz-Carlton Aruba here [will post later].

Aruba airport has two lounge that are accessible with Priority Pass. One of them ought to be near your boarding gate. This lounge isn’t amazing but free juice, nuts, and chips is still free.

Free Basic Sight Seeing

Some popular, yet easy to access, free sight seeing include California Lighthouse, Natural Bridge, Casiberi Rock Formation, and Aruba Aloe Factory Museum.

The image below is a typical route that you can follow to cover California Lighthouse, Natural Bridge, Casiberi Rock Formation, and Aloe Factory in a matter of few hours. I suggest leaving earlier in the morning because it tends to get pretty hot later on.

If you had to choose two basic places to visit I would suggest Natural Bride and Casibari Rock Formation.

At Casiberi you can take stairs to get to the top of two different rocks. Now, getting to the top of the main rock (pictured above) requires you to momentarily go between stones but there is enough gap in the stone. You also get a clear view of Hooiberg volcanic formation from the top of these rocks. Lookup videos on youtube if you’re curious about this place.

As far as Natural Bridge goes, well, you won’t get a view like that in the poster above anymore. You can’t also walk on top of it anymore which is a good thing.  Nevertheless, the surrounding makes this short trip worthwhile. Just be aware that the road leading up to the natural bridge is dusty.

If you want to be more adventurous then look  into renting motorcycle, ATVs or a UTV. Also consider exploring Arikok National Park which occupies roughly 18% of the island.

Oh and as far as I know, Natural Springs of Aruba is free. It is essentially a natural pool where people dive and swim. Some tours take you to the Natural Springs.

Annual Fee, $1000 Bank Signup, Southwest Vouchers

Some people are obviously going to say that the cost was more because in order to get those Southwest points, Companion Pass, and Ritz-Carlton free night certificate, I may have had to pay annual fees on some of those cards. The truth of the matter is annual fee was waived on both SPG cards (used to get Southwest points and CP) and there is a trick to waive annual fee on Ritz-Carlton card. Regardless, one of the trick to negating credit card and MS fees is to open bank accounts during your trip 😉

On the way back 2 x SunTrust accounts were opened. Each had a signup bonus of $500.

Also, we had some trouble with our connecting flight back home and some (not so valuable) items from our luggage were missing. Southwest gave us $75 voucher for the trouble which was very nice of them.

Closing Thought

The goal of this trip was to go outside US for cheap and we accomplished just that.