[imagesource: Naked Wanderings]

Travelling the world sounds like a great idea.

Travelling the world naked?

Not my idea of fun, but each to their own.

Maybe it’s the rolling lockdowns during the pandemic, or the ‘new normal’ that has us longing for freedom, but nudists (or ‘naturists’ depending on how they identify) have been in the news more than usual lately.

When you’ve finished reading this article, do yourself a favour and look into the naturist forced to chase a wild boar to retrieve his laptop.

In more sombre news, visitors at the world’s largest nudist resort was thrown into quarantine when they experienced an outbreak of COVID-19.

Also hindered in their travels were Nick and Lins De Corte, who were stuck in Mexico and unable to get flights back to Europe when lockdown kicked in.

CNN interviewed the Belgian couple who have made a career travelling in the nude.

“We were three months in, I would say, semi-lockdown,” recalls Nick. “But it wasn’t that bad,” says his partner Lins. “We had a nude beach.”

Nick and Lins capture their experiences online by blogging and sharing snaps on Instagram. They’ve done just about everything that the clothed traveller can do, including scuba-diving off the island of Utila, in Honduras, drinking beers in the buff in Portugal, and hiking nude through the Amazon rainforest.

On their blog, Naked Wanderings, the couple tackle all sorts of issues like how to position your legs in a nudist venue or at a nude beach, with specifics about the polite distance between the knees so as not to offend fellow beachgoers.

They’ve also touched on something that I’ve always been curious about – how to take belongings with you when you have no pockets.

As nudists, we already learned to carefully select our stuff before walking out the door. We don’t have pockets, remember, so either we have to take a bag or take everything in our hands.

Especially when visiting nude beaches, this is something you want to consider. “Do I really need this?”.

That advice actually translates quite nicely into everyday life, even if you are venturing out fully-clothed. See Adam Sandler’s rap for context.

They say that they’re trying to debunk some of the myths around naturism:

“There are two main preconceptions,” says Nick. “One is that it’s related to sex — lots of people don’t understand that people can be naked together without any sexual intention.

That’s one big misconception. And the other one is that it’s for old people.”

Travel blogging has become a full-time occupation for Nick and Lins, although this hasn’t come easy.

Instagram and Facebook have some pretty strict nudity rules, and Nick and Lins’ posts always skirt the boundaries of what’s allowed.

They’ve had to rely on clever cropping and artfully-placed objects to allow them to get away with it, but their original Instagram account was shut down last year and they’ve since had to rebuild from scratch.

As mentioned earlier, naturism has been in the spotlight more and more recently, and Laurent Luft, president of the Association des Naturistes de Paris (ANP), thinks he knows why.

“When you’re feeling confined and closed in and imprisoned, if at least you can take off your clothes that is some way to free yourself a little,” added Luft.

“So, even in our tiny little Parisian apartments with no gardens and sometimes no balcony or anything, we still have that possibility.”

A final word from Nick and Lins for those who have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea:

“Just try it.”

[sources:nakedwanderings&cnn]