In Aruba I rented a car from Hertz Renaissance Ocean Suites. It cost $97.40 and I had to bring it back with a full tank of gas. If you rent from this particular location, make sure you are going to the correct place. Even now having been there and knowing where it’s located, I’m struggling to find a map app that will give me directions to the correct location.

This is where Google maps took me. It was in some neighborhood. Fortunately I found a lady walking to work at the Renaissance and she helped me out.

The red arrow points to where it really is.

At the Hertz desk they gave me this Aruba map and an app that is supposed to help navigate. I couldn’t figure out how to get it’s navigation feature to work. I just used my Maps.me app.

If you use Maps.me, download the map for your particular location while you are on WiFi and it will work offline. I make sure I have the maps for each location I’m going before my trip. The Maps.me turn by turn directions worked great for me.

This is my compact car. 

The paper map I was given was helpful with the circled points of interest. 

We are down in the lower middle, to the left of the airport.  I’m mostly making a circle around this map hitting most of the circled points. The first place I’m going is Baby Beach in the lower right hand corner of the map.

This is what the Maps.me turn by turn directions looked like.

The USB in the car acted like it worked but it really didn’t. I used my headphones and wireless charger.

This is another look at my car now parked at Baby Beach.

I needed to use the bathroom. I had to pay the guy at the door a dollar to do so at this bar and grill.

The Rum Reef has a nice pool with a view.

They have a mobile gift shop in the main parking lot.

Donkeys are all over the place here.

I’m going to the rock formation next. There are some caves circled on the map but my GPS says it’s going to take two hours to get there. I don’t know if it’s rough terrain or if it includes walking but I don’t have two hours to spend so I’m skipping it.

I’m a big supporter of having more traffic circles and fewer traffic lights back home.

I made it to the rock formation. I’m a little nervous that nobody else is here. There are three ships in port. There are a lot of tours going on and it’s extremely unusual to not see any tours or even many cars near a tourist attraction. 

There are a lot of lizards here.

It’s a pretty good view from up here.

I’m not going in any caves with nobody else around.

Hopefully this is from a dog–A small dog.

There was more to see but it was pretty creepy being the only person there. I’m heading back to civilization.

Now we’re heading to the natural bridge.

It’s easy to see why a lot of people rent ATVs here but my little compact car made it.

The natural bridge used to go between here and the gold mine ruins (my next stop) but it collapsed in 2005.

This is what’s left of it.

I guess these two just pulled up a chair for the day.

This is a good photo op.

You can buy refreshments inside. The bad thing about renting a car is I can’t drink alcohol until I return it. That local beer sign is calling my name.

They have this rock display near the bathrooms in the gift shop.

Another $1 restroom if you need it.

It’s nice to know that lady I gave the five bucks to for helping me find the rental car place was saying thank you and not calling me a donkey.

This is the parking lot. You can see my car in there. A lot of jeeps, trucks, and SUVs get rented here. They do cost more though.

Next  we are heading to the gold mine ruins. As I was saying the Natural Bridge used to go all the way down there.

These are the remains of the Bushiribana Gold Smelting Plant which was built in 1872 out of gabbro stone. That’s one of the many stones we saw on display next to the dollar bathroom at the last stop.

There is the car. Again you can see why ATVs are popular to rent here.

This is the road leading from the Natural Bridge to the gold mine ruins.

The next plan was the Alto Vista Chapel but I passed this ostrich farm. I know this is on one of the ship excursions so I decided to check it out.

Here you can see the path we’ve taken. I’m going by the Ostrich Farm before the chapel.

Tickets were $15 for adults. Tours run every hour. It’s 1:15 but the 1pm tour hasn’t started yet. I decided to do it.

This is not an ostrich. It’s a peacock.

If you need a place to stop for a free bathroom break, this is a good spot. There was no charge for the bathroom or requirement to buy a ticket before using it. 

Here are the food and drink menus.

This is the gift shop.

This tour was mostly about feeding ostriches and getting pictures taken with them. I was with a family that has four kids so you can imagine how that was. The boys were messing with pigeons and ended up killing one. It wasn’t my favorite part of the day.

This is a one year old. The first ones were fed out of bowls. This one you can hand feed. I saw one eating his own poop so I can do without it.

These are emus.

The black one is an emu egg. The white one is ostrich. Ostrich egg = 24 chicken eggs. Their incubator doesn’t work. They send their eggs off of the island.

Which is mine? The dirty one.

Now we are heading to the chapel.

I’m starting out behind the chapel since that’s where I parked. This is the Peace Labyrinth which was built by a group of friends in 2005 who still keep it up today.

It’s hard to see with the shadow but there’s a dog on the left side. From what I’ve heard from others it sounds like he lives here.

The original Alta Vista Chapel was built in 1750. That one had stone walls and a straw roof. The church was deserted in 1816 and was rebuilt in 1950. 

This is the Trikes Aruba tour.

These are the crosses that line the road to the church.

Next we are going to the California Lighthouse.

The California Lighthouse was named after the S.S. California which sunk just off of the northeast coast of Aruba and is a popular diving location here.

It’s only $5 to go up to the top. I’ll have to do that. I love a good view point and this will beat out The Monument to the Discoveries in Lisbon ($10) for the cheapest I’ve been to.

These steps kind of remind me of the ones going to the Statue of Liberty Crown.

It is a good view up here.

It’s pretty tight up here.

It’s pretty steep going down and the handrail is a rope.

Next I am going to Eagle Beach. I planned this as my last stop of the day so I can get some beach time in. 

This beach isn’t Eagle Beach. This is a beach right by the lighthouse. I just stopped to take a look.

On to Eagle Beach.

Before I decided how much time to spend at the beach I wanted to see how far it was to a gas station and how far it was back to the Hertz. I have to return the car by 5pm. 

I remembered to bring a good beach bag.

I got in for 30 minutes.

The gas station is in sight but this traffic is going to cost me.

There was an accident at the traffic circle causing some of the traffic.

It took me a minute to figure out how to open the gas tank.

This was just under $11.

I have 32 minutes to return the car. It looks like I should be back in less than 5 minutes.

There was a Citgo right by the port. But as you can imagine a lot of people are trying to gas up there and the traffic is pretty bad as well. I still think it was a good move gassing up away from the port.

Dollar Plus? That could be any price.

That concludes my adventure in Aruba by car. I do recommend renting a vehicle in Aruba. It was quite hot and it was nice to have my air conditioning between stops. It was also nice to be able to lock my things up in the car at stops. The downside is the car rental place is closing at 5pm when our ship stayed at the port much later. It was enough time for me but I probably would’ve spent more time in the ocean if I had it.