Hooray! After an algae bloom that closed the beach for a week, it was re-opened today and we got into the sea at last, tramping backwards and forwards between our sunbeams and the water. Exhilarating might be the word I’m looking for here.

This evening, we went for a couple of drinks in one of my favourite beach bars. I’m not sure if it’s a full moon tonight. If it’s not, it’s tomorrow. So a beautiful starlit sky was filled with constellations and a bright moon as we ordered Mojitos, then more Mojitos. We were a bit tiddly. 🙂 Nothing like last week and jumping over bonfires, but I knew alcohol had been consumed as we kicked off our shoes and dabbled our feet in the cool sand.

It was also a warm night, so we didn’t need to wear much, just flimsy sundresses (and ‘going commando’ is very much a holiday thing anyway at night).

The sea was illuminated with the moon dancing on it, and we decided that a little night swimming was in order. Nudity is very much part of this beach bar’s daylight culture anyway, so no one really batted an eyelid when we slipped out of out clothing (Sylvia also have persuaded a Dutch couple and a Spanish local guy) to join us.

It was thrilling and invigorating to do that at midnight 🙂

The picture (above) almost exactly replicates the scene. Yes, we did take photos but no, they didn’t come out at all well, just blurs of moonlight rippled on a black background without human form evident. 😦

It was rather wonderful, though 🙂 Probably we’ll do more of the same tomorrow. I wonder if we can improve the photos so that a sense of someone, anyone, is possible?

Ella

I don’t take the decision to publish photographs of myself -albeit slightly ‘disguised’- lightly. Yes, Sylvia has taken several from our apartment so they’re at ‘distance’. Others have been blurred slightly to ‘protect the guilty’. I’m not about ‘exhibitionism’, but trying to convey how marvellous naturism really is.

I got into Second Life on the assumption that its ‘naturists’ would be real life naturists with whom I could share naturist experiences. That’s not always the case. In fact, it’s rarely the case. Many SL naturists are only naturists within the context of the game, not real life. But within the game I noticed there was a misconception, sometimes, about what naturism is (i.e. that it was being made about sex when its not). Over the course of 7 years I’ve seen a lot of changes regarding naturism within SL, most of it positive. Nowadays, I think, players have a much broader understanding of what it is and isn’t about. And if they don’t know what it is about, I’ll tell them, either here on the blog or in-world.

On recent holidays I’ve nudged around ‘real life’ photos. Why? Because if I’m going to attempt to convey the pleasures of naturism, I need to demonstrate that on the basis of ‘a picture being worth a thousand words’. If we’ve reached a broad understanding of exactly what naturism is within Second Life, and now see some of the game’s great naturist sims providing an accurate reflection of real life naturism, the hope is that maybe players know what it is and what it isn’t.

Maybe one or two ‘virtual’ naturists have even decided to take the plunge into RL naturism as a result of being schooled in the finer points of naturism through these excellent SL naturist sims. Who knows?

I’ve reached a point in my personal life where I tell people about my interest in naturism, my activity in it. It can only grow as a movement, as a lifestyle, as accepted as perfectly normal if more if us speak up about it. Putting up RL photos was both terrifying and liberating, almost as liberating as going naturist for the very first time.

It’s a photo…out there in cyberspace…forever!

This year the personal photos have been a little less coy than last year’s RL photos. A little braver but not, yet, at the point where it’s a full, crisp and clear set of photos. But that point is coming, I think! 🙂

By the way, the baseball cap wasn’t meant as ‘disguise’ (although it operated on that level too) but practicality under a hot sun…it was keeping the sun directly off the top of my head). And as usual, no glasses on, blind as a bat, and quite often unaware who else is around or in the pool. In the top photo, for example, Sylvia called my name and I turned towards her voice, but not exactly sure where she was 🙂

I think, then, when I return in September, we may well reach a point where, as an active RL & SL naturist, I might end up back on the blog’s pages as I really am. 🙂 Or not.

Ella

(edited to add: Getting braver 😉 These from a just completed swim 20 minutes ago. Again, photos by Sylvia (who despite being the more brash of the two of us, is a little more reluctant to get in front of the lens for you)

Another sneaky update… 😉

It pays to check out the archives, hahaha.

Just to prove I own more than one baseball cap to keep the sun off my head 😉 But thank goodness that palm leaf means that you’ve got to use your imagination to put the various shots together to create a whole.

Friday: 8pm. Home…and…

…camera shake is good sometimes 🙂