What should I avoid in Palm Beach?

The restaurants lining J.E. Irausquin Boulevard between the Marriott and the Hyatt Regency charge $38-55 for entrées that taste like hotel banquet food reheated under a salamander. A $42 chicken breast arrives dry, the pasta sauce could be Ragú. You're paying for the Palm Beach view and a tablecloth, not a kitchen that cares. Drive 20 minutes south to Zeerovers in Savaneta, where you pick your fresh catch at the counter and they fry it while you wait. A plate of red snapper with funchi costs $12-15, and the smell of hot oil and sea salt hits you from the parking lot. To be fair, MooMoo's Steakhouse and Bugaloe on the De Palm Pier are the two Palm Beach spots that locals eat at. MooMoo's does a rib-eye for around $45, and Bugaloe's $8 fish tacos on a wooden pier with sand under your feet are hard to argue with.

The timeshare pitches along Palm Beach hit hardest near the Playa Linda and La Cabana resorts. You'll get approached at the pool, at breakfast, in the lobby. The offer sometimes sounds tempting. A free snorkeling trip, a $100 dining credit, two free nights. The presentation "takes 90 minutes" but tends to run 3 hours in a windowless room where the AC is cranked to 18°C so you want to leave, which is the point. They rotate closers until you sign. If you have the willpower, the dining credits are real and worth sitting through. Most people don't, and $25,000 later they own 1/52nd of a studio they'll use once. Mind you, some of the larger resorts seem to have pulled back. The Hyatt Regency and the Ritz-Carlton appear to have moved away from in-house presentations, but the independent operators working the beach with clipboards still haven't.

The water off Palm Beach looks calm, and it mostly is, but rip currents near the pier structures catch a few swimmers each month during the June-November wet season. Lifeguards are posted between the Marriott and Holiday Inn, not along the full 2-kilometer stretch. If you drift north past the rocks toward Malmok, the coral drops off fast and the current pulls seaward. Aruba sits at 12°N latitude, closer to the equator than Cancún, and the UV index hits 11-12 by 10am year-round. A 20-minute swim without reef-safe SPF 50 will leave you lobster-red for 3 days. The trade winds feel cooling but trick your skin into staying out too long. Reapply every 40 minutes if you're in and out of the water. Hotel gift shops charge $22-28 for the same Banana Boat bottle that costs $9 at Ling & Sons supermarket in Oranjestad.

Taxis from Queen Beatrix International Airport to Palm Beach run a fixed fare of $25-30, but some drivers quote $40-50 to first-timers who haven't seen the rate card posted at the taxi stand outside arrivals. Worth noting, there's no Uber or Lyft in Aruba. Your options are taxis, the Arubus public bus for about $2.50, or a rental car at $35-55 per day from agencies in Oranjestad. Skip the Hertz and Budget counters at the airport, which tend to charge $70-90 for the same compact SUV a local outfit rents for half. Don't book snorkeling or UTV tours through the hotel concierge either. A catamaran trip to the Antilla shipwreck runs $55-60 booked directly through operators like Red Sail Sports or Pelican Adventures, and $85 when the concierge adds their 30-40% cut.