Caravel

Oranjestad runs on tourism and the port, but Angochi, the district in Santa Cruz where SV Independiente Caravel is based, has kept its own football club going since the late 1970s — 15 January 1977, according to the Papiamento-language record of the club's founding, though older Spanish-language sources give 1939, a date that looks more like a placeholder than a fact.

Caravel plays in yellow shirts and blue shorts, a combination that has earned it the nickname "the blue-yellow submarine" locally, while the Angochi connection gives it the alternative "Pirates of Angochi." Home matches are played at the Estadio Guillermo Próspero Trinidad, which holds 5,500.

The club has never won Aruba's top flight, Division di Honor. Its trophies come from the second tier, Division Uno, where it has been promoted as champion on several occasions through the 2010s, most recently in 2018/19. It also reached the final of the Copa Betico Croes in 2019 without winning it. Between 2018 and 2021 the club did not exist under its own name at all — it had merged with Porto to form Independiente Porto Caravel, an arrangement that fell apart, after which SV Independiente Caravel was re-established as an independent club in 2021. The comeback was brief: in 2022/23 the side finished 10th in Division di Honor and dropped straight back down to Division Uno.

The name most tied to the club is Harold "Roy" Helder, who played for Caravel, later served as its president for years, and became known across Aruba as a football commentator before his death in 2024.

What Caravel has not managed, in nearly five decades, is a top-division title — and after last relegating from Division di Honor, it is currently working its way back up rather than competing for one.