Aruba - Adventure Guide to Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao - page 56

A Dozen Reasons to Visit

Best beaches in the ABCs.

Colorful Dutch architecture.
Luxury resorts with all the amenities.

Friendly residents who welcome tourists in many languages.

A wild, arid countryside with spectacular geological forma-
tions.

Great dive sites and the largest shipwreck in the Caribbean.
Constant trade winds for windsurfing.

An eco-friendly national park.

A Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed championship golf course.
World-class casinos and nightclubs.
Shopping malls and designer boutiques.

Reasonably priced restaurants with international cuisine.

A Brief History

Early Inhabitants
The Archaeological Museum of Aruba displays evi-
dence that a semi-nomadic tribe of Amerindians lived
on the island approximately 4,000 years ago. Though
they left little evidence of their daily life, they proba-
bly lived in small family groups of perhaps a dozen
people and survived on fish, conch, and turtle meat.
The Caiquetios , a subgroup of Arawak Indians who
migrated to Aruba from South America, arrived
around 1000 AD. They also were fishermen, but they
farmed a bit too. Archeologists assume the island was
less arid at that time, before trees were harvested for their lumber and
wild goats were allowed to graze indiscriminately. Ruins of former
Caiquetio villages have been found around the towns of Savaneta and
Santa Cruz, and Indian drawings are still visible inside caves and on rock
formations.
Evidence of their fishing activities has been found along the portion of
coast that is now lined with major hotels. The island's most powerful chief
evidently ruled over the less prestigious chiefs of individual villages from
his home near Santa Cruz. He, in turn, took his orders from the tribe's
ruler on the mainland, now Venezuela.