Ask anyone, including plenty of people on Aruba, why the island's second city is called San Nicolas — you'll also see it spelled San Nicolaas, Sint Nicolaas or St. Nicolas, all the same town — and you'll get the obvious answer: it's named after Saint Nicholas. Patron saint of sailors, the Sinterklaas of the Dutch tradition. Makes sense for a Dutch-Caribbean port town, right?
The San Nicolas and Baby Beach Day
A narrated drive down the coast, these murals as a 9-stop essentials walk, or 14 with the extras, and the road to Baby Beach. 26 stops that play by themselves as you arrive. Works offline, one price for the whole car; by bus the road stories play too.
Wrong.
No saint ever set foot here
The real story doesn't start in a church. And that's nearly all we can say, because the answer is still physically visible today, painted on a building that thousands of tourists walk past without a second glance.
Here's what we can tell you without ruining it:
- The name has nothing to do with religion.
- The truth is hiding in plain sight, in big painted letters, somewhere in town.
- We are not putting it on the internet. You will earn it at the final stop.
Why we won't spoil it
This is stop 20 of our audio tour, The San Nicolas and Baby Beach Day, the moment where the whole story clicks into place. The narrator walks you from the town's most famous murals through its boom, bust and rebirth, and then hands you the town's name like a key, at the yellow house on the roundabout.
You could look it up, sure. But standing in front of those doors when the answer lands? That's the difference between reading about a place and knowing it.
Earn the secret on the street
26 stops from the coast road to Baby Beach. One town name you'll never forget.
Walk San Nicolas with local voices, $14.99