Greg Von Doerstein

Sun 'n' surf in Baja California Sur

ACCESS+RESOURCES Throwing Down the Towel Loreto makes a great last-minute getaway, whether or not you plan to engage in any social experiments while you're there. Getting There: Aero California Vacations (800-524-9191) offers a weekend package (nonstop from L.A., two nights at the Solare Loreto Desert Sun, food and drinks for $540 per person). Or call Aero California direct (800-237-6225). Round-trip airfare averages $350. Lodging: A cheaper alternative to the Desert Sun is the Loreto Playa B&B (www.loreto.com/playa/) for $98 a night (011-775-265-9396). Outfitters: For scuba, try dive operator Leon Fichman at Baja Outpost, (011-52-113-5-11-34, or 888 649-5951). —J.B

IN THE MORNINGS we behaved, well, perfectly normal. We had come to Loreto, in Mexico's Baja California Sur, to dive in waters renowned for big, wild sea-life. After breakfast, we'd siphon down a couple of scuba tanks' worth of air while exploring the depths surrounding offshore islands in the Gulf of California, swimming with habituated sea lions right up to the day when fishermen reported finding a sea-lion massacre, indicating the presence of a formidable predator, probably a tiger shark. Thereafter, we avoided the company of sea lions, fearing we might be mistaken for them.

As for the afternoons? Well, they offered natural, oft-concealed beauty of a different sort. And to tell the truth, I never did come to feel exactly normal about it. But I will say this: Stripping off my wetsuit in the hot sun and getting naked in public—at one of the rare spots in Latin America where this is sanctioned—made the trip that much more memorable.

Eroticism is a splendid thing. Like the tiger shark, it's an idea that holds our attention. But when eroticism goes public, something else happens. People have issues. Plenty of prudes insist upon splitting such matters between right and wrong. As my friend David Shaw put it in his 1996 book The Pleasure Police, "A growing number of people have become determined to make us all think that life is worse—less pleasurable and more dangerous—than it really is." On the other hand, blue-noses serve a useful function. They make it easier to be naughty, even when you're all grown up.

Two hours nonstop from Los Angeles, Loreto is one of those quintessential windswept Baja villages. Back in the 1980s, it was supposed to become another of Mexico's high-rise tourist traps. A single resort went up on the beach south of town, but then the government changed its mind; Cabo San Lucas, 250 miles to the south, was developed instead. Tourism in Loreto has struggled ever since, with the one-time Diamond Eden Resort, now the Desert Sun Resort, passing from owner to owner in search of a niche. During the last few years, it seems to have found one, attracting an adults-only mix of golfers, fishermen, and divers—as well as couples who prefer to sunbathe nude.

The sprawling resort accommodates the clothed and the naked on different sides of a dense oleander hedge. For our part, we already knew what it was like to hang around with the golfers and fishermen in their Bermuda shorts, so my wife and I decided to brave the other side of the oleander. Being a gentleman, I allowed my wife to go first.

Passing through an opening in the hedge, we saw an empty volleyball court, an open-air bar, and a vast star-shaped hot tub. I counted 30 naked and oiled people soaking up sun, standing, sprawled on loungers, sitting and sipping drinks. They generally ranged in age from their thirties to their sixties: pudgy, skinny, tanned, pale, droopy, firm, you name it.

We said hello to one group. Liisa draped her towel over an adjacent chaise lounge. No hesitation. Off came her top. Down went her bottom. Smiles all around. I tried to remember the axiom of scuba diving: Don't lose control of your breathing. "The only tan-line I want," she announced, "is from my wedding ring.

This was not what I imagined nudism to be, at least not the blasé variety in which naturists sit naked and splay-legged in mixed company playing shuffleboard and rummy, almost trying to prove that nothing is off. But neither did we sense the overt expectation of swingers. Instead, the people here seemed to be in some personal, racy in-between. They were flashers, they were voyeurs. The proximity of other naked bodies added a certain frisson of possibility, but the targets of people's hedonism seemed their own partners. A woman and her man would stare at each other with the flushing pride of prom dates, perpetually startled and pleased by the absence of costume. Liisa and I realized that most of the couples on this side of the oleander hedge were madly in love—and found daring the buff in the Mexican sunshine a remarkably loving thing. So while I don't know if I'll ever feel completely normal about it, I discovered that being naked in public with my wife was just all right with me—thrilling, but relaxing, too.

Tom Byrnes wrote about windsurfing Alaska's Turnagain Arm in the June 2000 issue. John Balzar is the author of Yukon Alone and a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times