🏖️ Beaches & water 📍 Seroe Colorado

A lagoon that is basically a giant natural paddling pool

If you are traveling with a toddler or a nervous swimmer, this is the beach the island was hiding from you. It is a forty-five minute drive from the hotels, and it is worth every minute.

Baby Beach sits at the far southeast tip of the island near Seroe Colorado, past San Nicolas. A curving arm of reef and rock encloses a shallow half-moon lagoon, and the result is water that stays warm, clear, and roughly waist-deep on a small adult for an unusually long way out. A four-year-old can walk a hundred meters from shore and still be standing.

There is a snack bar and restaurant, chair and palapa rentals, and restrooms. Take the rental seriously: natural shade here is close to nonexistent and the southeast end of the island is the hottest, sunniest, windiest part of it. Arrive with a plan for shade or arrive early.

The one genuine hazard is at the mouth of the lagoon. Where the reef opens to the sea, the current runs strong and pulls out. Keep children inside the lagoon, well away from the gap and the rocks, and treat the sheltered water as the whole of the beach rather than the start of it. Snorkeling near the opening is for confident adults only.

Because of the drive, treat it as a day rather than an afternoon. The natural pairing is the San Nicolas murals in the morning (ten minutes back up the road) followed by lunch and the lagoon.

Tell your kids this

A half-moon lagoon so calm and shallow it feels like a giant natural kiddie pool. That's how it got its name!

Look after it

Stay inside the lagoon; currents are strong past the rocks.

More finds nearby

Turn the list into a treasure hunt

Buska gives kids 75 Aruban treasures to find and photograph (this one included) and turns the trip into a keepsake book. Free to start, no ads, private by default.

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