Oranjestad, Aruba: the pastel capital, the trade winds and the beaches

Aruba gets very little rain. It sits far enough south and close enough to the South American mainland to fall outside the wet tropical pattern that shapes most Caribbean islands, and the result is an interior of cactus, thorn scrub, aloe and enormous weathered boulders — closer to the Venezuelan coast, which is visible on a clear day, than to anywhere green. Aloe was for a long time a serious export crop and is still grown and processed here. The second climatic fact matters even more for planning: the island lies outside the hurricane belt. Direct storm strikes are rare, so unlike most of the region there is no season to avoid, which is why Aruba runs at a steady pitch all year and prices soften only modestly outside the northern winter. Over the top of both blows the trade wind, near-constant and strong, and it is the thing visitors most consistently fail to anticipate. It makes the heat comfortable, keeps mosquitoes down, bends the divi-divi trees permanently towards the southwest, and makes anything loose on a beach a losing proposition. It also makes this one of the better places in the Americas to sail a board or a kite.

Oranjestad is small and pleasingly low. Its centre is a few blocks of Dutch-derived architecture — stepped and curved gables, shuttered windows, deep eaves — rendered not in northern brick but in strong tropical colour, so a streetscape of ordinary shops reads as a run of pink, ochre, teal and lime facades. A free streetcar runs the length of the main street from the cruise berth to the far end of the shopping district, which is a genuinely pleasant way to get your bearings and costs nothing. Around it: a small fort with a squat tower on the waterfront, a covered market, a marina of fishing and charter boats, and an archaeological museum with the island's pre-Columbian material, which is the one indoor stop worth making. The town is at its best in the early evening, once the day's cruise passengers have reboarded and the temperature drops — the harbourfront restaurants fill up with residents, and the place stops being a shopping stop and turns back into a small Caribbean capital. Note that much of the retail exists for the ships and closes when they leave.

The island has a sharp split that governs where everything is. The leeward west and southwest coast is sheltered, shallow and calm, with a run of wide white beaches: Eagle Beach, broad and open, with the two much-photographed windswept fofoti trees leaning over the sand, and Palm Beach immediately north, where the high-rise hotels, the watersports operators and the evening crowds are. Further southeast, Baby Beach is a shallow protected lagoon at the island's far end, warm and calm enough that it is the standard family choice. The windward north and east coast is the opposite: open Atlantic swell driven by that constant wind onto limestone and coral rock, with blowholes, a natural bridge that collapsed and left a smaller one beside it, and no safe swimming anywhere along it. Do not judge one coast by the other — visitors who see only the resort strip miss half the island, and visitors who wander onto the north shore expecting to swim are in real danger. The water off the leeward side is also where the diving is, including a large freighter wreck lying shallow enough that snorkellers can see its outline from the surface.

Close to a fifth of Aruba is protected inside Arikok National Park, on the wild eastern side, and it is the answer to anyone who thinks the island is only a beach strip. The terrain is desert: volcanic hills, limestone terraces, columnar cactus, wild goats and rock formations, with marked trails and a good deal of exposure — carry water, wear a hat, and start early, because there is very little shade. The park's headline is the Conchi, the natural pool: a bowl of rock on the windward shore where the swell breaks over a rim and fills a sheltered basin behind it, so you can swim calmly with the Atlantic detonating a metre away. Reaching it is the point — it is a long hot walk, a horseback ride, or a serious four-wheel-drive track, and the ordinary hire car will not do it, which is worth knowing before you set out. Elsewhere in the park, limestone caves hold pre-Columbian rock drawings, and the ruins of a small gold mill sit near the coast. This is the half-day that makes Aruba an island rather than a resort.

The island's own language is Papiamento, a creole with Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, African and English in it, and it is not a curiosity but the everyday tongue — it shares official status with Dutch, and English and Spanish are both widely spoken besides. Bon bini, the greeting you will see everywhere, is welcome, and using a word or two of it is received exactly as you would expect. The kitchen mixes the same sources. Keshi yena is the dish to look for: a shell of Edam or Gouda filled with spiced chicken or beef and baked until the cheese sets around it, a genuinely local invention out of Dutch ingredients. Pastechi, fried turnovers with savoury fillings, are the standard breakfast and street snack; fresh fish is excellent; and Dutch and Indonesian dishes appear on ordinary menus because both travelled through the same kingdom. The other thing to know is Carnival, which is not a weekend here but a season running from January to the beginning of Lent, with jump-ups, torch parades and steadily escalating road marches culminating in a very large Grand Parade. If you are here in that window, the island effectively reorganises around it.

Queen Beatrix International (AUA) sits minutes from Oranjestad and has heavy scheduled service from North America, connections from Europe via the Netherlands, and regional links to Curaçao, Bonaire and the South American mainland. Passengers bound for the United States clear US immigration and customs on the island before departure, which is worth building time for at the airport. Cruise ships berth directly at the capital. On the ground: the island is small and a hire car covers it easily, an inexpensive bus runs the leeward strip between town and the hotel beaches, and taxis work to fixed zone rates rather than meters, agreed before you set off. The free tram is only within the town centre. On seasons, the practical answer is that there is not much of one — the island is dry and warm year-round and sits outside the hurricane belt, so the choice is about crowds and price rather than weather. The northern winter is busiest and dearest, the autumn months are the quietest, and Carnival in the new year is a category of its own.