The Story behind the Picture

Ever since we had quite an awkward experience at Cap d’Agde (that’s a story for another time), the words “naturist village” have left a bad taste in our mouths. For a long time, Cap was the only so-called naturist village we ever been to. But it could hardly be called “naturist”. Naked village, yes, although late at night we were refused entrance in a bar because we were naked. Sex village was probably an even better name, because that actual bar would have allowed us if we had dressed in leather, wore lingerie , or covered our privates in ropes. We know, because we could see those costumes dancing inside.

Anyway, other places that called themselves naturist villages were actually just really large campsites. Lovely to spend time at, but you can not call them real villages. Years later, when we visited Vera Playa, we got another glimpse of the concept “naturist village”. And a much cleaner version actually. Nevertheless, the naked part was restricted to the beach and the streets where the different naturist apartments could be found. The center of town that had a couple of bars, restaurants, and a supermarket did require us to cover up. In actual clothing, by the way. The rope costume we saw years before would have given us many more stares than if we had walked around naked.

Until now, the place that comes closest to a real naturist village is Charco del Palo, which you can see in the picture of today. It’s a small village surrounded by national park on the eastern side of Lanzarote. Just like Vera Playa, it’s mostly a tourist village, although some people actually live there. But the best part is that you can be naked everywhere in the town. There’s not a naturist side and a textile side. It’s all naturist. Except for the local shop, where they ask to cover your genitals. We don’t know why, they’ll probably say hygiene reasons, but we’ve never felt the urge to rub our genitals against the vegetables or freshly baked bread. But maybe that’s some kind of fetish and some people actually do that. Maybe they had problems in the past. We can’t say, and since we’re walking around with a sarong anyway, it never really bothered us to wrap it around our waist when we went in to buy some beers.