Vera Natura (Spain) Report

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Vera Natura (Spain) Report.

June 2002

Travelling with Peng, I flew from Manchester direct to Almeria, where the five of us off our flight we were met by a 25 seater coach for the 70 minute journey to Vera Natura.

Vera Natura is one of several developments which are springing or have sprung up in the coastal strip north of the town of Garrucha. The whole of the area to the seaward side of the main road is a designated naturist zone, and what is nice is that there are no barriers, you just turn off the road and there you are in the naturist zone.

Vera Natura itself is a gated resort with four entrances controlled by magnetic key, plus the main reception area which you pass through to enter. There are 25 "bloques" (or "blokes" as we quickly christened them!) with generally 8 apartments to each. I had a ground floor one bedroom apartment the first week, and a first floor two bedroomed apartment the second week, when a friend of mine joined me for that week (though he was a day late arriving because of the general strike in Spain on the day he was due to arrive). The apartments were excellent - even the one I had on my own was larger than the one that a group of us had last year in Cap d'Agde. The bathroom was something else - an enormous heart shaped bath with integral seat, and very powerful shower (guess who flooded the bathroom with his first shower!). The second week in the larger apartment, we had some very nice antique style furniture, two settees, two ceiling fans, two patios, plus a microwave. Oh yes - and a doorbell!

It was disappointing to learn upon arrival that the fitness centre was not open - I would have appreciated some gentle exercise for my bad back, but apparently it suffered a flood some months ago and all the pumps etc. are broken. "But they are being fixed". Mañana.

The indoor pool is heated but chlorinated, however the outdoor freshwater pool was wonderfully relaxing and a few were doing length after length after length - one other visitor was sufficiently bored to count someone doing eighty lengths one morning!

The beach has very coarse sand which by comparison with Cap d'Agde from last year means that the stuff doesn't blow about, but is very difficult to walk on, and the beach shelves quite steeply so you find yourself in deep water very quickly. However, most of us seemed to spend our time around the pool!

The pools however, were miles better than the ones at Cap d'Agde, not least due to the fact that they actually contained water. But they were also surrounded by grass, with sunbeds available free of charge to the first takers which could be placed anywhere around the pool. Plus they're open 24 hours a day, so I had a couple of getting-close-to-midnight dips.

There's not a great choice of places to eat - I only ate out on four evenings - the rest of the time I cooked in the apartment. The cafeteria/bar within the complex which I gather has only recently opened under new management is open only until about 7pm. It was very poorly patronised which was a shame, but they only did fairly simple stuff, although we made a daily trip in for a mid-afternoon Cornetto! Other than the Saturday "Caribbean buffet" we didn't try the Chiringuito Nudista on the beach. The Natsun Beach Bar at the development next door had a good range of food which we tried a couple of times for lunch. Further up the beach was the Hotel Vera Playa, and just outside this, within the naturist zone (but for some reason everybody goes textile there) is Benito's, which serves excellent and plentiful food, and where we ate twice.

The Hotel Vera Playa has some rather strange rules about when people can and cannot be naked - nudity is permitted between the hours of 8am and 8pm but never in the hotel restaurant, and other people are only allowed into the hotel between 9pm and midnight! We went in to have a nose round at about 10pm one night, and found some line dancing going on, and serried rows of empty sun beds round a large pool. Hemmed in on all sides by a four storey hotel, we found it claustrophobic and not to our liking at all.

By contrast, nudity is acceptable 24 hours a day in Vera Natura, and indeed most people were nude whenever they were in the complex, and although most people put shorts on to go to the on-site 'supermarket' (which is also frequented by textiles from the area, who seem to co-exist quite happily with the naturists and don't give them a second glance), some of us (self included) didn't bother. I also didn't bother to put anything on when taking delivery of the hire car in the reception of Vera Natura, and the guy from the car firm wasn't quite sure what to do as he completed paperwork for me, thrusting my passport and driving licence vaguely back in my direction, and avoiding eye contact at all costs!

Vera Natura is very quiet. MUCH quieter than Cap d'Agde! And that I liked. I had taken a fair amount of reading material with me which occupied several evenings, and evening strolls along the naturist beach were also pleasant. Once we had the car, travel became easier, and we thought Mojacar (pronounced 'Mohackar') was very picturesque. We had dinner one evening watching the sun go down, from the terrace of a restaurant looking out over the desert landscape. The car was also useful to get to a proper supermarket in Garrucha, where we could at least buy some fresh meat, which we were unable to do at Vera Natura.

Most of the British people there had travelled with Peng Travel (www.pengtravel.co.uk) , although I did meet a couple who had booked with It's Natural (www.its-natural.net) who were very pleased with the apartment which had a dishwasher and washing machine too.

Would I go there again? Yes, definitely :-)

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