Eagle Beach Palapas: How to Get One (or Skip the Race)

Check availability & book your umbrellaReserve online. Umbrella and 2 chairs, set up for you.

Short answer

Eagle Beach has a limited number of public palapas and they are claimed by around 5 AM in high season, often with a towel and nobody under it. There is no booking system for them. If you want shade with your name on it, you reserve an umbrella and two chairs instead.

Eagle Beach is the picture people have in their head when they think of Aruba: a very wide, very white stretch of sand with the fofoti trees at the north end and the low-rise resorts set back across the road. It is also where the palapa problem is at its worst, because it is a public beach, there are only so many thatched roofs, and everybody wants one.

What a palapa on Eagle Beach actually is

A palapa is a fixed post with a palm-thatch roof. It does not move, it does not tilt, and it is first come, first served. On Eagle Beach you will find two kinds: the public palapas on the open sand, which anyone can use, and the ones standing in front of the resorts, which are for those resorts' guests. The second kind often carry a sign or a numbered tag. If there is no sign, a quiet question to the beach attendant saves an awkward moment later.

Because they are fixed, the supply never changes. The demand does: every cruise ship day, every February and March, every holiday week adds people to the same sand.

Check dates and book your umbrella

Pick Eagle Beach or Palm Beach, choose your dates and book in a couple of minutes. Your set waits under your name from 10 AM.

When the palapas are gone

In high season, roughly December to April, the public palapas are taken by around 5 AM. Not occupied: claimed. A towel, a bag or a chair goes down early and the owner comes back at ten. Hotel staff will tell you that this is not allowed; in practice nobody polices it on the public sand. By the time most visitors have finished breakfast, the shade is spoken for.

In the quieter months, May to November, you have a real chance if you arrive before 8 AM. After 9 AM it is a coin toss, and it depends on where you are willing to sit. The palapas closest to the road and the parking areas go first.

Why it matters more here than on other beaches

Eagle Beach is wide and open, with almost no natural shade once you leave the fofoti trees. The sun in Aruba is strong all year, the island sits well inside the tropics, and the trade wind blowing across the sand hides how hot you are getting. People who never burn at home burn here by lunchtime. A full beach day without shade is not comfortable and it is not sensible, which is why the palapa race exists in the first place.

Your real options

Set the alarm and race for a public palapa. It works some days. On the days it does not, you have driven or walked to the beach for nothing and you start the day annoyed.

Use your resort's palapas, if you are staying on Eagle Beach and it has them. Many of the low-rise resorts here do, and some let guests reserve one through the front desk. Ask when you check in.

Bring your own umbrella. Possible, but the Eagle Beach wind will lift a cheap umbrella out of dry sand within the hour, and a loose umbrella on a busy beach is dangerous. If you go this route, read our note on what the wind does to umbrellas first.

Reserve an umbrella and chairs. This is what we do. A set is one wind-anchored umbrella and two beach chairs, standing on Eagle Beach in your name from 10 AM to 4 PM. You do not race anyone, you do not carry anything, and when you leave for lunch it is still yours when you come back.

Reserved shade on Eagle Beach

Umbrella plus two chairs, $100 a day plus 20% tax and fees, $120.00 all in. Up to 16 sets a day on Eagle Beach, and you can book up to eight sets in one booking for a bigger group.

How the booking works

Pick Eagle Beach and your date on the calendar. If your beach day is 24 hours or more away, you pay online and the set is confirmed on the spot. If it is sooner than that, the calendar sends us a request first with no payment taken, we check the beach against walk-in rentals, and a secure payment link comes back by email once your set is confirmed free. Either way, the exact meeting point on Eagle Beach is emailed to you after the booking is settled. We do not publish it on the site, because the sets are for the people who booked them.

Multi-day stays are fine. Pick the first and last day and the price is simply $120.00 per set per day.

A few Eagle Beach practicalities

Parking is free along the beach road but fills on weekends, when locals come down too. The sand is soft and deep, so a set well back from the water is easier to reach with a cooler. There is no lifeguard on most of the beach, and the water is calm most days, with the odd stronger current when the swell is up. Sunset is from the sand, facing west, and it is worth staying for. Our sets come down at 4 PM, so plan the sunset as the walk back rather than from the chair.

Book your umbrella

New to this? Read what a palapa in Aruba is and who can use one.

Check availability & book your umbrellaReserve online. Umbrella and 2 chairs, set up for you.

Eagle Beach Palapas: How to Get One, and What to Do When They Are Gone