Photo from Flickr by Salvatore Freni

Call me stupid, but until a few days ago I believed Aruba was in Mexico. To my surprise — and subsequent embarrassment —  it turns out holidays to Aruba actually involve a hop, skip and a jump from Venezuela. Or Colombia. It’s a little island adrift in the Caribbean just 30km from mainland South America. It’s quite shameful when you make yourself look like a geographical idiot front of other people. Especially when you consider yourself a reasonably seasoned traveller. 

Anyway, after digging a little deeper, I found out some pretty quirky facts about this little Caribbean island that I reckon are worth sharing.

1. Aruba is one of the four constituent countries that form the Kingdom of the Netherlands. That’s right, this little island adrift in the Caribbean Sea forms 25% of the Netherlands. Which are technically in Europe… if you think about it.

2. Subsequently, if you live on Aruba, you are a Dutch citizen.

3. The 2001 Eurovision Song Contest winner, Dave Benton, was Aruban.  That’s not all. He actually represented Estonia in the contest.

4. The temperature on Aruba rarely deviates from 28 degrees centigrade all year round. If you forget about deserts and polar regions for a minute, this is actually pretty impressive.

Even as a seasoned traveller, it always surprises me when I mistakenly think that a country is in one place whereas it’s actually somewhere completely different. At least it’s not as bad as my own mum who believed that Cairo was in India until very recently. (True story.)