Vera Natura is an apartment complex situated on the same long beach at Vera Playa as the Vera Playa Club Hotel and the Natsun apartment group. The beach is over a mile long and one can walk nude over most of it. Most of it is easy walking firm sand but with shingle patches dependent on the state of the sea, wave action varies from crashing surf to a gentle swell. Curiously it seemed that the bigger the sea the more firm sand. The beach tends to be quite crowded at the Hotel (Eastern) end petering to very sparse at the other end. Overall occupation seemed to be higher this year than last. Most of it is designated as "Playa Nudista", it changes to "Playa Textil" somewhere along its length but nobody seems to take much notice. Sea bathing again depends on the size of the waves (and the competence of the swimmer). Away from the beach whilst the area is "Authorised for Nudism" most people seemed to dress before leaving the apartment complex.
The building activity in the area is everywhere, the Vera Natura site was completed between our two visits but there are several other developments all around. Most seem to be aligned to providing apartments and houses for sale and there appears to be a huge demand. An outfit called Armony Natura has started to build on a small corner of the large patch between the Hotel and Natsun sites. They have a website at http://www.proyeccionesinmobiliarias.com/natura/ which, although in Spanish, has some interesting aerial photos. We went into one of the sales offices "Torremar Natura" and were offered apartments for completion April 2002 for about 50 to 60K. It will be interesting to see whether the rate of building holds up after the conversion to the Euro as there is reputed to be much "Hot money" in old currencies driving it.
Back to Vera Natura itself: the complex consists of about 200 apartments in 25 blocks situated in landscaped gardens and with a swimming pool area nearest the beach. There is a small supermarket on the site. Nudity is the norm throughout the complex and required for those using the pool, there is also an indoor heated (hot) pool which was very pleasant on occasions. The gardens are maintained to a high standard. There is a buffet restaurant and bar on site. The complex is gated with access controlled by your magnetic key. Just outside the gates is a beach bar/restaurant which then leads onto the beach. The outside restaurant is nominally "exclusivo naturista" between 9.00 am and 8.00 pm but again this comes down to CO.
The whole atmosphere of the place is very laid back and relaxed and if you did not wish to go to the indoor parts of the restaurant in the evening you could stay nude for the duration of your stay. After the restrictions of some places it was good to be able to go nude anywhere on site or around the rest of the area. There was a little altercation one day when a group of Spanish youngsters tried to wear swimwear in the pool but were ejected by the local "Wardens" (some of the long term residents). I believe that they were later persuaded by their mother that they should obey the rules. The weather was good for both visits, a few bits of cloud on some mornings but it usually soon went away. Overall it was probably a bit warmer in early September than June. Evening temperatures were OK sometimes with a breeze, sometimes still. It was just about warm enough for the pre-breakfast walk to the sea and take a dip without even taking a towel as one could dry off before getting back to the room!
A point of interest on our September visit. A turtle had nested on the beach, apparently the first ever known there. Hatch date was said to be about mid September but whether the eggs survived a partial flooding on the heavy sea days was not known . The 24 hour watch team were frantically trying to build up a sandbag wall to keep them dry. Looks like the turtle did not know that it should have gone further back on the beach! We have later learned that the hatch was successful with about 30 young turtles hatched and into the sea.
A lot of the report about buildings may be off topic but it adds interest in the future of a splendid place to go on holiday where naturism is officially sanctioned. Depends on you views between the merits of "facilities" and "un-spoilt coastline" on whether you reckon it to be a good thing. There are some downsides in that there is not a lot to do in the evenings and relatively few local attractions. A bit more choice of restaurants within walking distance would be good (and may well appear as development progresses)
However, we thoroughly enjoyed both our visits and it will definitely be on the shortlist for future holidays. More details can be found on the Peng website or on http://www.veranatura.com/.
In December, PC added...
Now, about Vera Natura/Vera Playa. It depends very much on what you like in a holiday. We wanted to relax and do very little every day and Vera Natura is perfect for that. It consists of well appointed, self catering apartments of varying sizes. All apartments have room for sun loungers on the patio (although the smaller rooms have quite small patios). There is a small shop that sells the 'essentials' and 2 restaurants. When we went in September one of the restaurants was closed for a month for 'refurbishment', although we didn't see any work being done there during our 14 days! The other restaurant was on the beach and, to be honest, we were quite disappointed with it. We thought the food was not wonderful and was quite pricey. We ended up cooking our own meals in the evening with ingredients from the 'SPAR' shop on the adjoining complex. If you really want to eat well then it is probably better to get a hire car and go to a nearby village/town. The pool is very relaxed but as usual you may have to get up early to get a sun-lounger as there seems to be lots of people that 'reserve' their loungers with a towel and then go and have breakfast/lunch etc. It is however a brilliant place to 'chill out'.
We did walk down the beach to Vera Playa because at one time we were wondering whether to go there or to Vera Natura. You are correct when you say that the architecture looks interesting, however, when you go there the inner pool area seems to be quite crowded. There are lots of palm trees in this pool area which, if you are a sun worshipper, would hide important 'rays'. It has the atmosphere of a large hotel with lots of things going on. If you like a more lively holiday then maybe this is the better place to stay. It does look to be of good quality. We didn't stay there long so can't give advice about restaurants etc.
Both places are on the same beach, which is of good quality sand and totally naturist. We found the sea too rough and cold most of the time (but then we don't do cold!! :-)), although some people did brave it!
If you need more information then please feel free to ask.
Regards
PC
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