Story behind the Picture

Last week, we told you about Caroline, our Swedish intern. How she got involved with us and why she ended up joining us in Colombia and became a part of Naked Wanderings for a while. She would be working with us on a project about goods for naturists, but there was a small issue. She wasn’t a naturist. Or, let’s rephrase that, she had never been to a nude beach or naturist resort before.

Luckily, she is Swedish and Sweden has quite a sprawling sauna culture in which nudity is also the norm. So she had been naked with other naked people before, she just never considered that it had anything to do with naturism. As she would be part of Naked Wanderings, we thought that we had to introduce her to naturism. Just so she knew what it’s about and has an idea of what naturism is when she’s working on a project for naturists.

Caroline would be staying with us for 2 weeks, and we planned the itinerary carefully so we could pass by Tayrona National Park in the north of Colombia, where the only nude beach in the country is located. The thing with Tayrona is that it’s not just an everyday nude beach. From the entry gate of the park, it’s a good 3 hour hike to get to the beach. And another 3 hours back. It can be done in a day trip, but then there’s not much fun to it because you constantly need to be aware of the time and make sure that you’re out of the jungle before the sun sets.

There are camping facilities in the park though, mostly in the form of hammocks. So that was the plan. We would enter the park on the first day and do the hike to the campsite. The next day we would need to hike another hour more to the nude beach, we could stay there all day and in the evening hike back to the campsite. And on day three we would hike back to the entrance and leave the park.

The first day, we went to the entrance in the morning because we wanted to avoid having to hike under the hot afternoon sun. As a result, we arrived at the camp by noon. Now we can tell you, there’s not all that much to do at a campsite in the middle of the jungle. But we were sweaty and were looking forward to a dive in the sea. We didn’t want to push Caroline from the first moment because we know that a first time naturist experience can be a bit overwhelming. So we proposed to put on bathing suits and have a swim at the beach next to the campsite. Caroline replied: “I thought we came all the way here to go to the nude beach?”.

And that’s how we already went to the nude beach from the first day. We arrived, got naked, and it seemed as if we had all been going to nude beaches together for our whole lives. Not doubts, no stress, not a single awkward moment. And this is how we ended up with our intern at a nude beach in Colombia. Not one day, not even two, because we quickly went for one last skinny dip before we did the whole hike back on the last day.

A little side note: On some of the pictures you can see Caroline wearing a long sleeve shirt. After living in Honduras for a couple of years, her skin had adjusted to being exposed to lots of sunlight. Something she didn’t consider was that her skin had changed again while she was in Sweden. On her first day at the beach, she picked up quite a terrible sunburn, so the next days she could only be naked in the shade.