Oh what an amazing year was 2019!
This is already the 4th time that we (as in Naked Wanderings) are wishing you a wonderful new year. This blog post is the 344th one on this website. And this is also our 3rd year of traveling. Meanwhile, it has become a bit of a tradition that in this first blog post of the new year we reflect on what’s behind us and try to have a peek at what’s waiting down the road.
This is already the 4th time that we (as in Naked Wanderings) are wishing you a wonderful new year. This blog post is the 344th one on this website. And this is also our 3rd year of traveling. Meanwhile, it has become a bit of a tradition that in this first blog post of the new year we reflect on what’s behind us and try to have a peek at what’s waiting down the road.
For Naked Wanderings, 2019 has been a success story. We visited so many naturist campings, B&Bs, resorts, beaches, clubs, and events. In 2019, almost 1.4 million different people from 234 different countries have visited this website. We don’t know the exact stats but we do believe that this makes Naked Wanderings one of the most read naturist/nudist publications in the world.
The naked road – Part One
Exactly one year ago, we found ourselves in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. We had just left El Refugio at Playa Chihuahua nude beach and were on our way to explore the naturist options in Brazil. We soon found out that naturism in Brazil has different faces. On one hand are the public opinions, most often spread by non-Brazilians. These will either tell you that nudity in Brazil is as common as samba music or that, given the temperament of the Brazilians, non-sexual nudity could never exist in the country. Neither of those appeared to be true.
In our experience, public nudity is still quite a taboo in Brazil, but yet there is a growing naturist movement that mostly happens among the younger generations. And even though Brazil doesn’t have much more than a handful of naturist options, we did find some of the world’s most idyllic resorts, beautiful nude beaches, and amazing naturists. You just have to know how to find them.
The next country we decided to visit was even more controversial. Nudity-wise as well as in other areas. We moved on to Colombia. The Pablo Escobar days, when this country was among the most dangerous in the world, are long gone and Colombia has become an amazing destination to travel to. Also here, we found a nudist movement that is young, vital, and inventive. Even though they’re still taking baby steps towards a decent organization of nudism, we wouldn’t be surprised if new movements within naturism and nudism would come from this part of the world.
The cherry on our South-American cake came when we visited Colombia’s only official nude beach, located in Tayrona National Park. The moment our toes touched the soft sand, this beach was catapulted into the top three of our most favorite nude beaches.
The naked road – Part Two
When we started Naked Wanderings, one of our goals was to show the world that there are naturist options everywhere, not just in popular places. So we wrote about naturism in Thailand, Colombia, and California instead of the much more obvious France, Spain, and Florida. In the summer of 2019, we changed this plan and organized a huge road trip through naked Europe. Planning to visit some of the world’s most popular naturist destinations.
“Epic” is the least we can call this lap of our naked travels. In a little more than three months, we visited 23 naturist resorts and an equal amount of nude beaches in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal. Although all of these countries are pretty much neighbors, the differences are still huge. While France has a long history of naturism and is still the country with the most naturist options, naturism in Portugal and Italy has only started to decently grow in the last decade.
The large majority of naturist options in France are still campings, only recently there are also quite some bed and breakfasts added to the assortment. In Spain, on the other hand, there’s much more focus on small villa resorts. In Portugal, the tendency within naturism goes either to campsites in a very natural environment or guesthouses with lots of luxury. And Italy gets a mix of it all, still trying to find its own niche in the naturist travel world.
The other things we write
Our travels have always been the common thread of this website. Sometimes very obvious, like the many reviews we write about naturist resorts and nude beaches around the world. But also in our more generic blog posts our travels, or rather our experiences, will always trickle through. The places we visit, the activities we take part in and the people we meet along the way are the biggest influence on all our writings.
If you would decide today to binge-read all 344 previously published blog posts, starting from the first one from back in September 2016 all the way to this new-year-post, chances are that you’ll find them to be pretty incoherent. Thanks to the many different experiences and to the other naturists who share their visions with us, we still learn about naturism on a daily basis. This causes us to share a certain opinion today, and possibly the complete opposite in a couple of months from now.
From the very beginning, we have made it clear that Naked Wanderings is not an encyclopedia for naturism and nudism. That we only share our own visions. Today, we have to add that these are our “temporary” visions. Just like the world changes every day, so do our ideas and opinions. And we believe that this is the strength of Naked Wanderings. Another reason why we decided to start this blog 4 years ago was that we found the existing information about naturism old fashioned, rusted up, and obsolete. This is something we don’t want to happen to Naked Wanderings.
The social media drama
While many naturists have turned away from the common social media like Facebook and Instagram, we always kept believing that we had to invest a lot of time in those channels if we wanted to reach a large public. It’s a revolution we see within naturism in general. When you keep hiding behind a large fence, you can’t expect others to just believe you when you say what you’re doing there. If you want the general public to understand naturism, you have to face them. Let them have a look inside and show them what it’s all about.
We thought that social media was the perfect way to show the world about our naturist lifestyle. It took exactly one month of sharing naturist content on Facebook to get us our first ban. Over the years, many other bans would follow. If you’re friends with our Nick & Lins account on Facebook, you may have noticed that we’ve been sharing very little lately. That’s because the account is either banned or about to be banned again. The other day, we got another 30-day ban for posting a picture of just our two faces. Really Mark, if you think our face looks like a butt you can just tell us.
Anyway, we’ve learned to work around the strong Facebook radar, and (knock on wood) our Naked Wanderings Facebook Page has remained pretty untouched. In April 2019, it was that other Zuckerberg company that started to cause us problems. Big problems. Just like that, our Instagram account with 43 000 followers disappeared from the web. No explanation, even after we’d sent them over a hundred messages, we’ve never seen it back. If you’ve seen some of the pictures we take, you can imagine that they require quite a lot of time to take and that meanwhile, we have thousands of bloopers. We probably don’t have to tell you that the day we lost our Instagram account was not the best day in our naturist blogging career.
But we came back. Being even more careful not to burn the Silicon Valley eyes with nipple colored pixels or too obvious butt cracks. This is something every naturist influencer has to go through. A constant fear that all the work you’ve been putting in creating fun and engaging photos might go through the drain from one moment to another.
The other Naked Wanderings projects
In the course of reading this blog post, you may have noticed a gap in the chronology. So we traveled to Brazil and Colombia and several European countries, but then autumn most have come to Europe, so what happened next?
For the first time on this Naked Wanderings world trip, we decided to include a part where we don’t cross the globe from one naturist place to another. There are two main reasons for that. One is what we called the “Europe overload”. By traveling to so many naturist places around Europe, that became pretty much the only thing we wrote about during the 2019 summer months. There was not much space left for more generic topics about naturism and also the Naturist Talks interviews had to make place for European nude travel content. Good news for those who are planning nakations within Europe but we also understand that there are some among you who got bored of reading yet another review of a French naturist resort.
The other reason is that time has really come to start thinking about how we can keep all of this feasible, financially-wise. We wish that we can keep up this naturist travel blogging lifestyle for a long time to come, but one way or another the bills will have to be paid. Since the start of Naked Wanderings, we had the idea that if we want to reach an as broad public as possible, we can’t ask money for what we do. That’s why we never had a donate button or a Patreon or Onlyfans account.
Of course, the money has to come from somewhere. At the end of 2018, we made an exception to this “rule” by creating Naturist Guides. They took a lot of work and we think that they’re definitely worth the couple of dollars we ask for them. Then came our line of naturist t-shirts, a cool gadget and although certainly not a source of financial stability, they did pay back some of our daily expenses.
There had to be a better way. We found out that if Naked Wanderings had been a website about anything else than nudity, we could easily make a decent living via advertising. Unfortunately, thanks to anti-nudity policies, we are not allowed to use any of the mainstream advertising networks. Leaving us either with shady companies and porn ads. We decided that it was time for a change. Not just for us, but for all naturist bloggers out there. If we could create a platform for naturist advertising, it would give naturist businesses the unique opportunity to advertise their business on a variety of naturist websites. On the other hand, it would give naturist websites (like our own) the chance to finally earn some money. This could be a motivation to write even more and better content and for newcomers to give naturist blogging a chance.
Long story short, in November 2019, NaturistAds was born.
Long story short, in November 2019, NaturistAds was born.
What’s coming up?
With the launch of NaturistAds we somehow also defined a strategy for the near future. By investing a little less time in continuous traveling to naturist places and a little more in our side projects, we hope that eventually, we will find a perfect balance where one part pays for the other.
How we’re going to arrange all of that practically is still a big mystery and something we’ll find out along the way. What we do know is that after almost two months at the same place, working on NaturistAds and brand new Naturist Guides, the travel bug starts itching again. It’s time to move on and start exploring more of what this wonderful naturist world has to offer.
Recently we announced the next big step in our nude travels: At the end of January 2020 we’re finally going to attend the Zipolite Nudist Festival in Mexico. Later in spring, also the nudist resorts of Jamaica are on the agenda and after that, the summer will return to the northern hemisphere and the options to get naked will be plenty again. How we’re going to fill up our summer is still a work in progress. We’ll let you know when the time is right and the plan is more concrete.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxeylymBVtN/
The Naked Wanderings public (Yes, You!)
If there is one thing we’d like you to remember from this very long blog post, it’s that all of what you’ve just read, the South American trip, the epic Europe trip, the large social media accounts, and the launch of NaturistAds would never have happened if it wasn’t because of you. Our dear readers.
In 2019 there have been 1.4 million of you, interested in our writings, sharing your opinions, and following our recommendations for the next great nude holiday. Without you, Naked Wanderings would just be a useless page in a dark corner of the world wide web.
So we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for being there, thank you for the support, thank you for all your messages and comments and chats and tweets and all the other ways you’ve been in contact with us, sharing your ideas with us and probably also influenced our writings.
We hope to see all of you back in 2020!
Have an amazing new year!
Have an amazing new year!
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Happy New Year to both of you and may you keep naked journeying way into the future. I am amazed by what you have achieved. You’ve inspired me to start my own nude blog to share the sheer pleasure I gain as a naked sailor. Here’s to a sunny summer, but not the heart waves in Australia.
Happy New Year! Your new ad network for naturists is a really good idea and I hope it really takes off (like my shorts at a naturist beach!). Wish we could meet up at Zipolite in a few weeks but it looks like we’ll have to wait another year. Cheers and happy travels!
Hi guys, congratulations and Happy New Year! Love your blog! FYI I have a “mini-blog” about our trip to St. Martin last month, for our 50th anniversary. You might be most interested in this post: https://chucknjoni.blogspot.com/2019/12/50th-anniversary-trip-comparison-of.html
Naturally yours,
Chuck Goodwin
O wow ! 1.4 million??? hollyyy… thats crazy!
Happy new year.
For 2020,like it matters what i think or ask, cause i know at times my posts might seem aggresive, or rude or provocative, but in reality they are not, they are just straight forward, something most ppl dont do, cause they calculate, i dont … so sorry if my msgs dont please many eyes on here , anyway … for 2020 a question and a “dare” ?
Q: since u been around the globe, where do u prefer it most ? Australia(im not even sure if u been there ,u been to so many places i lost track lol and i regulary read) but in a case u werent then ,Americas as Canada ,USA or SA, or Europe?
D: i dare u to spend a month at Cap ,to get a real good insight on what its really like there ,what do u see, what do others see , what do ppl talk ,how ppl react to things ,stuff ppl wouldnt mention normaly and similar ..yayay i know it prolly costs alots to be there so this dare prolly wont happen (not saying that u cant afford it but u know .. a kind of a ..Cap for a month < rest of the world for a year thing)
We don’t like to pick a favorite. First of all, because we haven’t been to so many places yet (e.g. Australia). Because we’re often seen as a reference for naturist traveling, it wouldn’t be fair to say that this or that naturist place is the best one in the world. Another reason is because naturist places are so different from each other.
It’s not a secret that we love Zipolite beach in Mexico. But why? It’s not the most beautiful nude beach in the world and it doesn’t have the most beautiful nude resorts in the world. For us it’s mostly because we love the vibe of the town, we love the friends we have made there and we love the sound of the breaking waves. It could well be that someone else goes to Zipo and thinks that it absolutely sucks because you can’t swim in the ocean.
Another example is Bare Oaks resort in Canada, which is also not the most wonderful naturist camping around. But the vibe when we were there and the people we met were amazing. Similarly to Bélézy in France, of which we think that it’s the perfect example of a family-friendly naturist resort. But we’ve met others who didn’t like it at all.
So there you go, we’ve given some personal favorites but we know that this doesn’t mean much.
A month in Cap… As you say, budget-wise this would already be a problem. But also, it’s not our kind of place. We don’t need much more than a day to figure that out. Again, this is completely personal and we have met genuine naturists who stay at René Oltra and only go to the main nude beach and love Cap d’Agde.
Ya thats cool, i figured its hard to pick one.
Of course i kinda ment ones that fit you the most.
A place doesnt have to be the most pretties ever to fit one the most.
I`ve seen some pic of Cap for example, cant see any videos cause no1 ever posts that , and i dunno if its still like that right now, but that big hotel or whatever it is complex, looks so 70s , old school stylish, and i love it, so in that sence , id pick Cap as one of my favs, not that ill ever know lol .. i also like from what ive seen , Euronat, it looks just so ordinary, nothing Las Vegas typo-fakish, it looks real cool to me, reminds me of what we have here a little part of a island that hopefully wont be comercialised.
As for the dare part lol, i know u dont like Cap, but i totaly dont agree that 1 day is enough to get the whole picture.. no way,but i can udnerstand u say that cause u dont like the place and ur not interested for that dare or Cap in any way.
But ya, thanx for the answer and explanations.
The architecture of Cap d’Agde is great, if you like that retro 70s style. And there are other reasons why Cap is a cool place. Although it’s technically not a real village, it certainly has the feel of one. You can do pretty much everything naked what you would do in any other village. Go to the bank, the shop, the restaurant, drive your car, etc.
For us, the major downer was the atmosphere. Cap had a very aggressive feel to us. We didn’t find the relaxed atmosphere which is so typical for other naturist places. All very pushy. And that’s something we can feel in just a day. Of course, things might be slightly different if we would visit in May or October when there are no 40 000 people roaming around.
I love retro, everything .. mainly cause i like ordinary things, manual thing, things where u can still remember that ur human ,not a robot.
Ah i totaly get the atmosphere thing!.. its pretty much the same here with our main official city beach .. it was once a very classy place to be, now? .. way to much ppl, noise,different music from every caffee and loud and mostly shitty domestic turbofolk ..its not a place to relax thats for sure .. its literally like going out on a Sat night, but its not night and its not downtown but a beach .. but thats a different story how it became that ..
Thats one of the reasons, even back in the days, altho then the only reason was the big crowds, why with my parents we always went to other unofficial beaches (unofficial means in this case that its not maintained by the city nor it has safeguards ,hence ur on ur own if something happens). And i liked it there , way lesser ppl, no caffees so no music/s around, and thats when i saw some nudies back then as i mentioned it b4 already lol ,thats when i learned that there are ppl that like to be nude at beaches..they were farish away tho, not the same beach.