A few days ago, early morning, I was out on the balcony. Naked, because the temperature was surprisingly gentle for a February morning so I took advantage of it.
There is something amazing, wonderful, soothing to be out there, hearing blackbirds call out (yes, they are early this year) and hardly hearing anything else out there.
I even was blessed with the absence of cars while I stood there and took in nature from where I was. It was still dark. That helped me to imagine I was out in nature, surrounded by trees, grass, lakes, anything non-human.
In nature, away from people
Sometimes I need that. To be all alone, away from the madness of humanity, mingling with the feel of nature itself.
That is a big part of nature-ism for me. Nothing on me, no one around me. I just want to take in the healing feeling of what nature has to offer, and enjoy that as much as I can.
It doesn’t take much to enjoy that, for me. I know many people have difficulties with that, though. They are so much into the stress and haste and hurry of life that they forget to stop and really ‘feel’.
What are good naturist vacation options in Latin America?
My girlfriend and I are looking at a naturist vacation far away. I understand that South America doesn’t sound very far away for people in the US. From Europe it’s quite a haul.
I’ve been looking around for Mexico but the options there seem to be quite limited. I found a place that’s super luxurious and costs an arm and a leg for a night. That’s not what we want.
Also it’s not what we can afford.
I had a look at the Dominican Republic as well. The only nudist hotel there that I found is Eden Bay. There are many references to it online, e.g. on TripAdvisor, but their website is either down or broken – I can’t get to it. Does anyone have experiences with Eden Bay? Is it still operational even? (Since their website doesn’t work…)
Through naturist-resort.com I found 3 options. 2 no longer have a working website. Only Caribbean Nature on St Martin looks operational, and that seems to be a nice place.
I’m genuinely surprised that the number of naturist vacation options in South America is so limited. Either that, or they do their best to stay hidden and under the radar.
It really makes me wish that the resort from Naked Crow 3 had really been built.
So yes, this is not your regular blog post. This is a call-out to people who have been to decent naturist resorts or hotels in Latin America. I would love to hear from you. Where were you, what were your experiences, what do you recommend and what is totally a place to stay away from? A big, nude thank you from me and my girlfriend!
You may have heard of it. Or seen it online as #NormalisingNudism.
And yes, the British s in Normalising pops up everywhere.
A great naturist/nudist friend of mine,Nevada Motojicho, wrote: “You don’t always have to be naked to normalize it.” (Follow the link to find him on MeWe or look for him on Twitter.)
That struck a chord with me that sparked this post. Because he is right.
Traditionally nudists flock with birds that have the same lack of feathers, in this instance: clothes. That’s how they feel most at home and natural. The fewer restrictions for the body, the more nudist they are. Check.
But… statistically, as far as I know, the majority of people in this world are not nudists but textilists. They’re the human species that do not come close to nude beaches and such venues because, well, there’s a lack of textile there. Figures, right?
So, take your average group of people.
Like on the left.
All happy and… dressed. Poor souls. We all know that.
What better setting than this to start educating?
No, this doesn’t mean you should find a bunch of people in clothes and get naked near them. Unless you like that and want to risk being arrested, which will happen in most Earthly places.
It’s just grabbing the opportunity to talk about nudism or naturism. As soon as hobbies come up. When vacation comes up. When spending a leisurely evening comes up. And you don’t need to slap nudist in their face immediately either, unless you know it won’t be a problem. There are many ways to introduce a nude lifestyle to people. Expressions like ‘clothes are overrated in my house’, for instance. That leaves it to everyone to draw their own conclusions. If they’re curious, they will come and ask, even when it may take some time for them to gather some courage.
I think it’s also important to keep it at one or two remarks at first. Don’t overdo it, or you risk ticking people off. Looking like a nudist addict can stigmatise you as a pervert in modern society.
I’m curious what you think about this. How you approach things like this.
I know. This image doesn’t look like much. It’s a browser tab. The initiated have already figured that out.
This is the tab where my “Live Laugh Nude” Mastodon-account lives. The link here is an invite link. Feel free to click, even if you’re just curious. There are no obligations.
What is ‘Mastodon’?
Mastodon is an open source, community driven, free social medium. There are no big companies who want to sell your data.
More and more people are running from Faceborg to Mastodon because of its open and friendly nature.
Live, Laugh, Nude
Live, Laugh, Nude is a “node” of the Mastodon network. It is based on the same principles as all of Mastodon but no one there is censoring your information (unless you talk about really bad stuff like child porn and terrorist crap). Many nudist people from Twitter are moving to this Mastodon server as well, since Twitter has opened a hunt on our kind of people.
If you’re curious: have a look. Don’t be shy. Don’t feel intimidated: the interface is a lot like Twitter in the simple mode, or Twitter’s “tweetdeck” in the advanced more.
I saw this a while ago and had to save it. When I started writing this post, I heard just the latest episode of the Naturist Living Show and I remembered this image.
So what do these two have in common for me?
Naturism and nature
Most of the time I treat naturism and nudism as the same thing, simply because it’s easy. Now, however, for this post, I tear them apart. And here’s why.
Nudism for me is the desire to be naked as much as possible, wherever. To enjoy the feeling of being clothes-free, at home, inside, outside, anyside. (And yes, I just made that up.)
Naturism for me is the desire to be in touch with nature as much as possible, in the most natural state of being. This, you guessed it, is naked.
Your blogger on a nude hike in the UK.
Being naked and as much in touch with nature always makes me fall in love with nature. For simply being able to be there, for feeling in my proper place. For the sheer exhilaration of sensing everything nature throws at me without being fenced off by roofs, clothes and stuff like that.
As the poster at the top says, it’s a revolution that starts inside us. I don’t believe that anyone wants to be nude without an inner desire, a drive, a sense of wanting it. In that respect nudism and naturism line up perfectly. Nudism, I might say, is the first step. Being nude. Natural. Naturism takes it a step further by being nude in nature.
But nudists can be in nature too!
I hear you. Nudists visit nude beaches, nudist resorts, nude venues and play nude volleyball / petanque / tennis etc.
Absolutely true and more be the power to them.
The difference here, for me, is that naturists are trying to be more aware of nature. Of the lifestyle they are carrying. Of respect and care.
If you, dear nudist reader, feel that nudists do the same as naturists, then that’s wonderful. I’m simply laying out the difference for me.
Ecologically responsible
I am convinced that people being naked in nature is the best thing that can happen to nature. It puts us in our place the way we naturally are. Clothes make you less vulnerable and therefore more prone to damaging nature. Rough nature that damages your skin? A solid coat or shirt handles that. Difficult ground? Massive boots solve that. A terrain is hard to get through? Joe, hand me that bulldozer.
The natural human
I understand that sometimes things like that need to happen in the name of advancement, but the way humanity is abusing our planet at the moment, with plastic crap everywhere (even in our food!) and pollution all around us, we’re not doing anyone or anything a favour.
Falling in love with nature might be the best thing that can happen.
When you love something, you care about it, you nurture it, make it better. You don’t rip it apart for most profit.
In the podcast which I mentioned above, Stephane mentions ‘Ethical naturism’. I think that captures all my words in a very nice way. Still, my words will stay up here.
Thanks for reading this far. I hope this post made some sense. 🙂 Please, fall in love with nature.
In this post I want to lay out a few thoughts I suddenly had about the reason that so many people stick their clothes, even when deep inside they know better.
For instance: imagine it’s a hot summer’s day. The the only logical thing to do is take off your clothes. And folks still need to wear something, no matter how flimsy. There is this need, this weird mental obligation to cover up.
I suddenly realised it’s not only because people are afraid of being naked. It’s also because of their inbred body-shame issues. Even people who don’t look bad according to these disgusting, modern beauty-standards, suffer from this same thing. I am convinced of that. TV and ads convince everyone they never look good enough. That is the beauty-dogma for me.
And so they cover up.
The people you see at a nude beach…
Did you ever hear or read this one?
The people you see at a nude beach are not the people you want to see at a nude beach.
That is one of the problems with the beauty-dogma. Everyone who tries so hard to look so beautiful expects everyone else to look so beautiful as well. The brainwash has taken full occupancy of their mind in that respect. And so these people are against nudity because…
…not everyone at a nude beach is ‘beautiful’. (Again, according to the impossible beauty-standards of today.)
I think it’s partly because of that beauty-dogma that many people refuse to be sensible about clothes and heat. And it goes even so far that they will do what they can to embellish their outside with clothes, because vanity rules in many ways. Combine something powerful like that with body-shame and other influences like religion and peer pressure, and I think the picture is coming together quite nicely…
Bodypainting is an amazing form of (self)-expression for me. It’s something that no amount of clothing can come close to, because paint on a skin can be applied in so many ways that a tailor can’t ever keep up.
And, like in the image on the left, anyone can paint someone else and go crazy. Poor tailor yet again.
Skin wins.
The efficiency of bodypainting.
I can hear you wonder what this means. But, according to me, there is an efficiency to bodypainting over clothes. When you want to be very varied (I admit, those 2 words next to each other made me grin 🙂 ), you will need a lot of stuff.
A mountain of clothes
Lets start with clothes. Being varied with clothes means something like this. And maybe that isn’t even enough. You will need a pile of clothes that is going to set your wallet back quite some. We all know the price of clothes, right? Not many of us are full-time naturists, so clothes come into the picture at various stages of life, no matter we don’t like that.
This is not uncommon among naturists, for obvious reasons. Being nude is the idea, so variation with clothes is already a no-no.
Paint.
Then there is paint. A can of paint can go a long way. Service a lot of bodies. And it can create anything you set your mind to. Of course, the final result will also depend on your painting skills, but using paint is a lot easier than making clothes, I hope we all agree on that.
So here we have a nice number of things in which paint is more efficient than clothes. Usually it’s cheaper, it’s more versatile, it has less of a learning curve and with less you can do more. If you have clothes, those will only fit certain people, where paint fits anyone.
The beauty of the body.
And with all this, I haven’t even brought up the beauty of the body, and how it can be emphasised by paint. And we can do that in the most personal way. If three people are asked to paint one specific model, you will end up with three entirely different designs of the same starting point.
This is why I love bodypainting.
Do you have experience with bodypainting? Either having done it or having it done to you? What was it like? I am curious.
This is something that just popped up in my mind at some point. Things have a habit of popping up and some of them are worth writing about.
Naturists are known to have less / no body shame. Some of them/us are still growing up to the point where it disappears, but it is clear to many that bodies are what they are. All different, all special, all good.
Nude darts, free as you can be.
Naturists are, as far as I know, very much aware of their bodies. That has nothing to do with shame but the mere fact that we know our body. We know when it’s comfortable, when it’s not so great.
People who wear clothes all of the time have lost that awareness (or perhaps they never had it in the first place, since they were ‘wrapped up’ before their mind developed enough to notice.)
It’s autumn now. Or fall. Name it as you want. Naturists in the northern hemisphere are wearing more clothes. I don’t know about you, but I am very much aware of that fact. I feel those layers of fabric. Of course, I know my body needs those things, otherwise I’ll be cold and that’s not nice.
Still, despite knowing all that, it sometimes is as if my body revolts against that stuff. As if I am not made for those wrappings. Heck, at times I feel like a mummy, especially when I have to bend or squat down to pick something up. There’s that direct awareness that something is cutting off my ability to move and also my blood-flow. Those are the clothes.
Summer of 2019
I’m certain many of you have similar feelings.
I, for one, am looking forward to the next warm days of spring and the next summer. Oh, sure, having 40C days this summer wasn’t extremely funny at work (that’s 104F) but without clothes I find those days much easier to handle than the days of -10C to 5C (10F to 40F) wearing the garments.
I just need to find a place that allows for doing the work in the buff. 😀
And perhaps not so human, but I shall leave that up to you.
Indoor sports are important
Naked volleyball – a naturist’s favourite, it seems.
Being naked and doing sports is fun for most people. Of course, there are always people whose body isn’t up to sports, either never was or isn’t anymore.
For those who enjoy it, having an indoor option is important. As you can see in the above image, the volleyball players have a lot of fun. In the sun. The times, they are a’changing though, as Bob Dylan already knew long ago. The times are bringing low temperatures, rain, cold things and a general unpleasantness for being outside. I am sure you see my point already.
So if you want to do indoor sports, what options are there?
This depends a lot on where you live and how many nude sport-folks you can round up. Going to a gym for a nude sports hour once a week sounds great but there’s hardly a gym that wants to open up for two people. Still, a nude gym hour is an option.
Here in the Netherlands, many swimming pools have an evening per month for nude swimmers. Sounds like a good option too – unless you’re not in the Netherlands. Sorry.
Following swimming is the good old sauna. Nude in the heat, what is better?
The next thing I can think of is indoor tennis or badminton.
I know there is a location in the Netherlands (I am from here so… 😉 ) that offers naked badminton once a month.
What other options come to mind? Darts sounds like a good sport to do naked, and it’s something many people can do. It’s low impact and still it can be very competitive. And that brings me to pool or billiards.
I am not very good at this but playing this game can be a lot of fun. You will need a place that has a good table, which makes naked billiards a bit more complicated than nude darts, which you can do in almost every home if you have a sacrificial wall. (Not every dart hits the board, keep that in mind!)
Board games are an option too
I admit, you have to be a fan to play board games, but those are just as easily played and lost in the nude as in clothes.
And finally, if you want to take it to the limit, take your clothes off and play a game of chess with this set:
You can find it here. Be warned. This set is not cheap!
