Published on and written by Cyril Jarnias
Leaving family, friends, and familiar surroundings to move to a Caribbean island might sound dreamy on paper. Yet, even in the heart of “One Happy Island”, many newcomers eventually feel a hard-to-explain emptiness: homesickness. Whether you’re a student, expat, digital nomad, retiree, or on an extended stay in Aruba, this nostalgia can seriously tarnish your daily life if not understood and tackled head-on.
This article offers a concrete guide for dealing with homesickness in Aruba, based on scientific knowledge about nostalgia and considering the island’s cultural, social, and practical specifics.
Understanding Homesickness in Aruba
Homesickness is not a whim or a sign of weakness. Psychologists define it as emotional distress related to being away from the places, routines, and people that gave us a sense of security and belonging. Sometimes called a “minor situational depression,” this phenomenon is considered normal in the process of adapting to a new country.
Between 20% and 90% of expats experience homesickness during their first year abroad.
Homesickness in Aruba is often fueled by several combined factors: very different climate, a slower “poco poco” pace of life than in many countries, marked geographical distance (the island is about thirty kilometers north of Venezuela, but very far from Europe or North America), high cost of living, social relationships to rebuild, and learning a new culture, a mix of Arawak, African, Dutch, and Caribbean influences.
Symptoms to Spot
The manifestations of homesickness are varied and can blend with the effects of moving stress, fatigue, or jet lag. Among the most frequent signs are:
Homesickness manifests as persistent sadness, intrusive thoughts focused on home, and a tendency to negatively compare the new location. It is accompanied by irritability, difficulty concentrating, sleep and appetite disturbances, aches with no clear medical cause, and social withdrawal marked by isolation and retreating to online contact with the home country.
A study published in a German human resources management journal even showed that homesickness can directly impact expats’ work performance (increased errors, delays, decreased quality of work). In Aruba, where many expats work in tourism, healthcare, hospitality, or services, this drop in performance can add professional pressure to an existing fragility.
What Aruba Changes – For Better and For Challenge
To better manage homesickness, it helps to honestly acknowledge what the island brings positively, but also what can be destabilizing.
Aruba is often described as one of the safest islands in the Caribbean: low crime, political stability, low risk of natural disasters (the island is outside the hurricane belt), relatively high standard of living, modern healthcare system, quality tap water from desalination, dry and sunny climate almost year-round. About 110,000 inhabitants, over 90 nationalities, over two million tourists per year: a mix of small community and international crossroads.
Despite its strengths, moving to Aruba presents some challenges: a possible sense of isolation on this 180 km² territory, a high cost of living (especially for imported goods), and the feeling of being overwhelmed by tourism. The local pace of life (“island time”) and administrative delays can be frustrating. Furthermore, Aruban society, although warm, is conservative and very family-centric, which can make social integration complex for newcomers.
Understanding this context is already a step toward relieving guilt: if you have trouble feeling “at home” right away, it’s normal. Aruba is welcoming but requires a real period of adjustment.
Learning to Live on the Island: Immersing Without Getting Lost
One of the most powerful levers against homesickness is to transform Aruba from a transit destination into an invested living space. It’s not about denying your home country, but about adding a “second home” to your identity.
Discovering Neighborhoods and Leaving the Hotel Triangle
Many newcomers initially settle in Noord or near Palm Beach and Eagle Beach, where hotels, restaurants, beach bars, and shops are concentrated. It’s an excellent starting point, but staying confined to this hyper-touristic zone risks amplifying the feeling of being “just visiting.”
Exploring other areas allows you to better sense the soul of the country: Oranjestad, the capital with its colorful Dutch facades; San Nicolas, the “Sunrise City” in the south, in full cultural revival with its street art murals; Santa Cruz or Savaneta, more residential, where you encounter more local families than cruise ship tourists.
To balance discovery and familiarity during your stay, set the simple goal of visiting one new place each week. This could be a market like the one in San Nicolas, a café popular with locals, a local beach like Mangel Halto or Baby Beach, or a hiking trail in Arikok National Park.
Making Iconic Places Your Own
Some typical Aruban activities can become reassuring rituals and contribute to creating new positive memories that aren’t just “touristic.” Climbing the 587 steps of Hooiberg to see the sunrise, watching the sunset from the dunes near the California Lighthouse, regularly returning to the same cove to swim or read, participating in a guided night walk in Arikok, or frequenting the same café where you start to recognize the regulars.
Turning these one-off experiences into routines helps anchor the idea that you live here, not just that you’re staying. Homesickness feeds on the feeling of loss; building new meaningful habits is a way to compensate for this lack.
Understanding the Importance of the “Poco Poco” Rhythm
Aruban culture values a laid-back, unhurried lifestyle, often summed up by the phrase “poco poco,” literally “slowly, slowly.” This rhythm is expressed through the concept of “island time“: less rigidity with schedules, more tolerance for delays, priority given to family, social bonds, and shared moments.
For an expat used to a fast-paced, performance-driven environment, the perceived slowness in a new country can be frustrating and reinforce the feeling that ‘nothing works like back home.’ However, accepting this different rhythm as a simple cultural characteristic, without necessarily fully adopting it, can reduce chronic stress and thus indirectly lessen homesickness.
Learning to sync your personal rhythm with that of the island, at least partially, can involve micro-actions: planning more buffer time in your schedule, anticipating longer administrative procedures, turning the wait for a bus or appointment into a moment of observation and discovery rather than irritation.
Combating Loneliness: Building a Social Circle in Aruba
Homesickness almost always worsens when you remain isolated. Yet, building connections in Aruba requires patience: local communities are strongly structured around the extended family and “barios” (neighborhoods), and expat groups can be mobile, with frequent arrivals and departures.
Leveraging Linguistic Diversity
A major asset of the island for breaking isolation is its multilingualism. The official languages are Dutch and Papiamento, but English and Spanish are widely spoken. This means that a French speaker with some command of English or Spanish can quickly start a conversation.
Learning a few words of Papiamento opens many social doors. Simple expressions like « Bon dia » (hello), « Bon tardi » (good afternoon), « Bon nochi » (good evening), « Danki » (thank you) or « Con ta bai? » (how are you?) are often perceived as marks of respect and interest in the local culture. General language apps or local courses can serve as a starting point.
An example of a useful mini-chart to stick on your fridge or in your phone:
| Papiamento | English |
|---|---|
| Bon dia | Hello |
| Con ta bai? | How are you? |
| Hopi danki | Thank you very much |
| Por fabor | Please |
| Te aworo | See you later / see you soon |
These few words, repeated at the supermarket, café, or bus stop, can be enough to start exchanges and feel less like a stranger.
Joining Communities, Clubs, and Initiatives
Aruba offers many integration opportunities through activity. On a formal level, there are universities and higher education institutions hosting over 20,000 international students, sports clubs around soccer and baseball (two national passions), but also hiking, diving, wellness associations, book clubs, and artists’ groups, especially in San Nicolas.
Discover authentic activities to meet locals and immerse yourself in Curaçao’s local culture.
Visit the San Nicolas Marketplace or art workshops for authentic encounters and to discover local crafts.
Learn to prepare specialties like keshi yena (stuffed gouda) or pastechi (savory pastries) in a friendly setting.
Participate in a match or attend an event at the Joe Laveist Sport Park to share the sporting passion and strengthen community feeling.
To break loneliness, getting involved in volunteer projects is particularly effective. Several initiatives seek volunteers: Arikok National Park for cleaning natural sites, the Donkey Sanctuary for animal care, the Aruba Reef Care Foundation or the Aruba Lionfish Initiative for coral reef protection, or socio-educational programs like Scol di Arte in San Nicolas. Joining a common project gives a concrete goal, structures free time, and multiplies quality social interactions.
Using Networks and Apps Wisely
In Aruba as elsewhere, social networks and connection platforms can be a good springboard, provided they are used with discernment. Facebook groups or expat forums, like the sections dedicated to Aruba on Expat.com, allow you to ask questions, identify events, and sometimes participate in informal meetups (“Let’s get together – Social Activity in Aruba”).
For making contacts, compatibility-based apps like Boo are recommended, especially for the LGBTQ+ community navigating a sometimes conservative social context. After an initial online contact, organize the first meeting in a public, friendly place to ensure safety and comfort, for example at a beach bar like MooMba or Bugaloe, a café in Oranjestad, or during a walk on the Surfside dike.
Facing homesickness, these tools have a dual nature. Well-used, they create local connections; poorly managed, they encourage withdrawal into home country relationships and passive consumption of content that accentuates the feeling of loss. The challenge is therefore to set limits: for example, a maximum of one hour per day on social media, prioritizing Aruban groups rather than endless scrolling of what’s happening “back there.”
Preserving the Link with Home Without Getting Trapped There
Homesickness feeds on distance, but also on the fear of losing one’s connections. In Aruba, digital technologies largely facilitate contact, provided two pitfalls are avoided: permanent hyper-connection with the home country and total cutoff.
Building a Communication Routine
Scheduling regular appointments with family or friends – a weekly video call on Sunday, a daily voice message, a long monthly email – helps find a balance. Apps like WhatsApp, FaceTime, Skype, Zoom, Facebook Messenger, or Google Meet allow free or low-cost conversations as long as you have a reliable internet connection (SETAR and other operators offer suitable mobile and fixed plans).
A simple chart can help visualize your main communication channels, for example by listing the channels (email, meetings, internal messaging), their frequency of use, and perceived effectiveness. This allows you to quickly identify the most used channels and those to optimize.
| Tool | Main Use | Advantage for an Expat in Aruba |
|---|---|---|
| Calls, messages, family groups | Free on Wi-Fi, very widespread locally | |
| Zoom / Skype | Group video calls | Ideal for virtual family gatherings |
| Facebook / Instagram | Photo and news sharing | Allows loved ones to follow your life |
| Longer, reflective messages | Less intrusive, leaves a record |
The important thing is not to use all the tools, but to choose those that suit your family and incorporate them into a regular rhythm. This reduces the fear of “losing” others, which in turn soothes homesickness.
Creating Symbolic Bridges
Sending and receiving packages (considering shipping times and postal fees), postcards with Aruba landscapes, or creating shared photo albums via Google Photos reinforces the impression of a living link. Sharing the same book and regularly discussing a chapter, watching the same movie remotely via a “virtual movie night,” cooking the same dish each in your country during a video call: all are rituals that recreate a form of shared daily life despite the ocean.
Concretely sharing your new life with your loved ones, beyond simple descriptions, helps integrate it into their imagination. It allows them to live part of your experience and can reduce the feeling of being misunderstood.
Building a “Home” in Aruba
Homesickness often manifests as the feeling of being “nowhere at home.” Yet, psychologists emphasize the importance of creating an environment that offers safety, familiarity, and comfort, even in a very different country.
Making Your Residence a Refuge
Whether you are in a rental apartment in Noord, a student room near a campus, or a shared apartment in Oranjestad, a few simple elements can transform an impersonal space into a reassuring place: photos of loved ones, symbolic objects, a blanket, a kettle for your favorite drink, a few loved books, a small plant. The idea isn’t to exactly reproduce your old home, but to mix familiar landmarks with local elements (Aruban crafts, ceramics, art inspired by the Divi Divi trees, for example).
To integrate Aruba’s aesthetic into your interior, draw inspiration from the colorful décor of Oranjestad and the murals of San Nicolas, rather than seeing them solely as an exterior backdrop.
Structuring Your Daily Life
Creating routines is one of the most scientifically validated tools for reducing anxiety and sadness related to change. In Aruba, this can involve:
– A morning ritual: a short walk on the nearest beach, coffee on the balcony, a few minutes of breathing facing the island’s constant wind.
– A sports habit: regular swim at Eagle Beach or Palm Beach, yoga class, sunset jogging, weekly hike at Arikok or Hooiberg.
– A dedicated time each day for a pleasant activity: reading, writing in a journal, drawing, listening to music, practicing an instrument, learning Papiamento.
Creating a simple little chart of your weekly routine can help provide structure and thus reassure the nervous system. This framework serves as a safety net when nostalgia becomes stronger.
Protecting Your Body to Soothe Your Mind
Aruba’s climate – hot, dry, very sunny, with a refreshing wind – requires some physical adjustments: regular hydration (tap water is excellent, which helps), serious sun protection despite the deceptive breeze, attention to the wind which can mask the feeling of heat. However, fatigue, dehydration, or sunburn accentuate irritability and sadness.
Maintaining your health (sufficient sleep, balanced diet despite the high price of imported goods, limiting alcohol and festive excesses) doesn’t eliminate homesickness, but reduces its grip. Especially since the island’s healthcare system, centered around the Dr. Horacio Oduber Hospital and several clinics, is of good standard, which in itself is a reassuring factor.
Anchoring Yourself in Local Culture to Transform Nostalgia
The more you understand the host culture, the less foreign it seems. In Aruba, identity is made of multiple layers: heritage of the Caquetios (Arawak) peoples, Spanish then Dutch colonization, African, European, South American, and Caribbean influences. This complexity is found in the language, cuisine, music, religious and secular traditions.
Participating in Festivals and Traditions
Major events like Carnival, Dera Gai (solstice and St. John’s Day festival), the Dande of New Year, or Dia di Betico are moments of strong social cohesion. Attending as a simple spectator and then, gradually, as a participant, allows you to experience collective joy, to feel the country from the inside rather than as a postcard landscape.
Consulting the Aruba Tourism Authority events calendar to regularly participate in art festivals, culinary fairs, and local music concerts (tumba, soca, wals, dande) is a powerful mechanism. It nourishes a projection toward the future and helps counter nostalgia, which locks you into the past.
Discovering Cuisine as an Affective Language
Food is one of the strongest vectors of emotional memory. Trying local restaurants like Zeerovers in Savaneta, Nos Clubhuis, Local Store, or small neighborhood eateries, tasting keshi yena, funchi, pastechi, but also occasionally finding a flavor from home (a bread, a cheese, a spice) is a way to link the two worlds.
Cooking at home is also a good compromise between budget and emotional comfort: preparing a typical dish from your home country and pairing it with Aruban products (fresh fish, local vegetables) can symbolically illustrate your dual belonging.
When Homesickness Becomes Too Heavy: Asking for Help
If nostalgia persists beyond a few weeks or months, intensifies, spills over into daily functioning (work, studies, relationships), it is crucial to ask for support. In Aruba, several mental health structures exist, with professionals trained in various approaches.
Among them, organizations like Healthy Minds Aruba, Aruba Clinical Services, or centers like Centro di Desaroyo Humano offer individual psychotherapy, group therapies, couples or family support, psychological assessments, and treatments based on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), mindfulness, or dialectical behavior therapy (DBT).
These structures offer services in Dutch, Papiamento, English, and Spanish, facilitating expression in a language more comfortable than the local one. For students or employees, it is advisable to inquire about mental support programs offered by the university, employer, or through local and international insurance.
Asking for an appointment is recognizing that homesickness goes beyond simple blues and deserves dedicated space. Therapists, who see many struggling expats, students, or migrants each year, are familiar with this type of issue and can help distinguish what is part of a normal adaptation from what more closely resembles a depressive episode.
Adjusting Your Mindset: From Loss to Expansion
Part of the work against homesickness is internal. It’s not about forcing yourself to forget your home country, but about redefining what “being at home” means. Aruba can become one of your homes, without erasing the other.
Adapting to a new country often follows a three-phase cycle: a honeymoon phase (excitement), then a disillusionment phase (nostalgia, irritation), and finally an adjustment phase (acceptance and integration). Knowing that this adaptation curve and this culture shock are normal and shared by the majority of expats can be a great relief.
Working on your perspective can mean practicing gratitude (noting three things, even small ones, that you appreciate in Aruba each day), acknowledging what this move enables (a different quality of life, cultural openness, a professional or study experience), while allowing yourself to miss certain aspects of your former life without seeing it as a failure.
Limit as much as possible the temptation to make urgent decisions (“I must go back right away,” “I’ll never last here”). Giving yourself a review date, for example six months or a year, allows you time to go through the different phases without putting extra pressure on yourself.
Turning It Into a Personal Growth Experience
Experiencing homesickness isn’t pleasant for anyone. But if we believe the scientific literature on expatriation and the testimonies of many migrants, it is also a ground for inner growth. Learning to create a base of security within yourself rather than in a single geographical place, developing the ability to rebuild social networks, discovering that you can navigate between several cultures without getting lost: all this can become, in time, a source of confidence.
Aruba offers a safe and calming framework for your journey, thanks to omnipresent nature (sea, wind, light), a warm population, a strong tradition of solidarity and volunteerism, and a supportive, already established expat community.
Homesickness is not a sign that you made a mistake in coming to Aruba. It reflects the important bond you have with your history, your loved ones, your culture. By taking care of yourself, building connections on the ground, enjoying what the island has to offer without feeling guilty for what you miss, you can gradually make “One Happy Island” not a slogan to impose on yourself, but a nuanced, more complex, and more authentic reality: a place where you can be both nostalgic and building, sometimes sad, often curious, and little by little, at home.
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Cyril Jarnias is an independent expert in international wealth management with over 20 years of experience. As an expatriate himself, he is dedicated to helping individuals and business leaders build, protect, and pass on their wealth with complete peace of mind.
On his website, cyriljarnias.com, he shares his expertise on international real estate, offshore company formation, and expatriation.
Thanks to his expertise, he offers sound advice to optimize his clients' wealth management. Cyril Jarnias is also recognized for his appearances in many prestigious media outlets such as BFM Business, les Français de l’étranger, Le Figaro, Les Echos, and Mieux vivre votre argent, where he shares his knowledge and know-how in wealth management.
