Eight Days, Naked and Happy, at Fox Bay on the Black Sea Coast

I heard about a magical place that Peace Corps volunteers referred to as Hippie Beach, a nude beach on the Black Sea Coast of Crimea where you can camp on the beach for as long as the weather permits. The beach is an oasis in Ukraine, a country of harsh winters and harsh people.  With only the information passed down from former Peace Corps volunteers, I set out to find this place formally called Fox Bay.

Getting to Fox Bay

I took a train to Simferopol with some fellow volunteers. The ride was full of drinking, laughing, music and fun. We get to Simferopol then on a bus to Feodosia, with no real idea of where to go when we get there. Once in Feodosia it could be tricky getting to Fox Bay, there are 2 options.

One is to ask the taxi drivers in Feodosia if they know Liska (Ukrainian for Fox Bay) and if they were willing to drive there. Supposedly many drivers won’t go there because the roads are so horrendous, which says a lot considering the dreadful shape of the average road in Ukraine.

The second option is to hike to Fox Bay. The directions were: walk along the coastline  cliffs until you're there, that's it. Needless to say, we were hoping to find a willing cab driver as opposed to walking aimlessly along some cliffs. We asked about four cab drivers until we found Rostik, our hero driver. It’s dark by the time we pile into his 4-door eastern European beater of a car, trusting he knew where he was going.

On the Way to Fox Bay

We get off-road almost immediately and the car struggles going over the seaside cliffs and through the foot-deep pot holes. We can’t see where we are going, but Rostik seems confident and doesn’t slow down a bit. An hour later he drops us off in the middle of nowhere, cliffs on one side and ocean on the other.

We're There, Man

After Rostik drove off, the only light we had was the moon. We start walking towards the faint sound of music and the smell of food. Up out of nowhere are make-shift lounge areas where you can get food, with pillows and blankets strewn and people chilling, drinking and smoking. Loving the vibe. Our cell phones don’t work so we can’t connect with our friends already here, but as fate would have it, they were in one of the lounge areas as we walked by.

Hippie Beach is a 25-yard-wide strip on beach, tents strewn about, that seems to go on for miles - the Black Sea on one side and cliffs on the other. We find a space, checking with our potential neighbors first, and pop up our tent: our home for the next 8 days.

Eight Days at Hippie Beach

The next morning my friend and I wake up to our neighbors smoking something in their tent. One of the tent occupants,  Weedy-Pete, who he’d soon become known as, was from Kiev and spoke English. He invites us into his tent and handed us a green filled pipe. Couldn’t have been a better introduction to Hippy Beach.

Afterwards, he said he would come back and try to help us out, and true to his word, Weedy-Pete came back and hooked a sister up.

We spent the day naked on the beach, going in and out of the Black Sea to our heart’s content. Amazing. Word got out that a group of Americans were there and we were a popular place to be. People came to talk with us, to smoke with us, to look at us, to just sit with us.

The following 8 days included:

A guy we named Poncho

Poncho was a man who always wore a camouflage poncho. That’s all we know about Poncho. He was drawn to us from day 1. Coming to us in the morning, sitting near us all day then disappear into the night. He never spoke, he just sat, sometimes towards us, sometimes just near us, always around us. The longer we were there the closer he got, but he never said anything.

Who could he have been? We had theories that he was a Russian spy. That he was on a really long acid trip. He was mute and deaf. He was doing a performance art piece. But we never found out and we’ll never know. I hope you’re still keeping on, Poncho.

Shit mountain

There were no toilets at Hippie Beach. We peed in the Sea, but poop was another beast.

Every morning, people could be seen walking towards a certain area where the cliffs recessed to take care of this human need. This area, a kind of mount of dirt, I called Shit Mountain. At first I would take a lot of time to walk to the back, trying to find a place that was hidden, where as few people as possible could see me squatting and pooping, like an animal.

On my search for the perfect pooping place, I would pass poops of yore, old poops from who knows when taken by who knows who, and the occasional fellow beach goer taking his or her morning deuce. After a few days, my need for poop privacy diminished and my criteria was no longer visibility, but just a space with no newish poops around. One of the guys from our groups even walked by me one morning, doing my thing, and we just politely waved as he went about finding his acceptable pooping place.

I had never felt so primitive, and I have never since.

Drum circles

Every day and night there were drum circles. Whether we walked up the beach to find them or they found us.

4:20

All day.

Burned baby neighbor

One neighbor was a mom, dad and a baby, maybe 1-year old. She just ran around. No one ever used sunscreen in Ukraine, it was just a luxury many couldn’t afford. But it was extra important for baby skin. This baby was so sun burned she was peeling. We didn’t know what to do, if we could do anything.

Walking to the center area

Our tents were set up about a mile from the “town” where the makeshift food places and lounge areas were. We had to make the trek there for water and food each day. I dreaded it, walking in the sand for that long, then having to come back carrying a big jug of water. I trekked out each morning after shit mountain, before it got too hot, to get this cheese stuffed pretzel delicious thing, a snack and water to hold me over for the day.

Lots of nakedness

Whatever comfort level people were at, and people got more and more comfortable as the days went by. Swimming in the Black Sea naked, in the salt water felt so good. Waking up to naked morning yoga and stretches. Being able to walk anywhere in anything you wanted, or nothing at all.

Morning naked stretches

Until Next Time, Fox Bay

Coming back from Fox Bay my phone was swiped on the train. Since I didn’t have service at the beach and I still couldn’t call my mom upon my return, my mom was worried, as moms do. Her worry deepened when she looked up my bank statement and found charges in Russia. Apparently at the same time my phone was stolen, my debit card information was stolen and was being used in Russia. She thought I was kidnapped by the Russian mob. An entertaining cherry on top of a glorious adventure.