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( Aruba)
Aruba is a 33-kilometre (21&_160;mi)-long island of the Lesser Antilles in the southern Caribbean Sea, 27&_160;km (17&_160;mi) north of the Paraguaná Peninsula, Falcón State, Venezuela. Together with Curaçao and Bonaire it forms a group referred to as the ABC islands of the Leeward Antilles, the southern island chain of the Lesser Antilles. An autonomous region within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Aruba has no administrative subdivisions. Unlike much of the Caribbean region, Aruba has a dry climate and an arid, cactus-strewn landscape. This climate has helped tourism as visitors to the island can reliably expect warm, sunny weather. It has a land area of 193&_160;km2 (75&_160;sq&_160;mi) and lies outside the hurricane belt. Aruba's first inhabitants are thought to have been Caquetios Amerinds from the Arawak tribe, who migrated there from Venezuela to escape attacks by the Caribs. Fragments of the earliest known Indian settlements date back from 1,000 AD. Sea currents made canoe travel to other Caribbean islands difficult, thus Caquetio culture remained closer to that of mainland South America. Europeans first learned of Aruba when Amerigo Vespucci and Alonso de Ojeda discovered it in August 1499.[1] Vespucci, in one of his four letters to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, described his voyage to the islands along the coast of Venezuela. He wrote about an island where most trees are of brazilwood and, from this island, he went to one ten leagues away, where they had houses built as in Venice. In another letter he described a small island inhabited by very large people, which the expedition thought was not inhabited.[citation needed]
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