[Arubalisa]

Originally Posted by chigirl102004

Althought hotels room rates might be low - food and drinks are really high from what I hear. We thought saving money by doing all inclusive could allow us some extra $ to go out and eat a few times etc...

This is EXACTLY what we do. Out of 12 nights our next trip we will be eating dinner "off property" at least 4 times. We enjoy some of the ala carte restaurants at the Tamarijn so there is no suffering there.

I have read that some areas of the beach are rocky, murky, rough and overall not as nice. What area of Palm Beach is best?

Parts of the beach at the Tamarijn had been rocky for a couple of years. Recently though Mother Nature has covered all of the rocks with the exception of a small stretch of beach.

As to the "murky" water, these reports are of Palm Beach and are not only subjective, but vary according to the time of day and weather. There are a lot of watersports boats in this area. Before they get going in the a.m. the water is much much clearer than the rest of the day.

IMo, check out some of the tags for the Tamarijn at http://www.aruba.com/forum/tags/

The Tamarijn/Divi is only about a 3 star resort, but imo, the best bang for the buck if you are looking for an all inclusive. The worst drawback I could see is that night time may not be quite as lively as you would like, but there are always other options off property.