Naked Wanderings
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The Nude beaches on Krk and Rab in Croatia
🕑 Added 2024-07-29 10:37:19 +0000 UTC
For a long time, Croatia has been one of the world's top destinations for nude vacations. The country was home to some of the largest naturist resorts ever seen and its endless coast was dotted with nude beaches. For a variety of reasons, Croatia has seen a decline in clothes-free tourism in recent decades, which resulted in several resorts where nude was once the norm going textile and nude beaches making space for mass tourism in bathing suits.
Yet, you can still easily find places to get naked in Croatia. Several naturist resorts in Istria, like Koversada and Valalta, have survived the crisis and seem to be gaining popularity in recent years. If you just want to be naked on the beach, it's best to make your way to the islands. Hvar Island may be the best known, but we found some small naturist paradises in the Kvarner Bay, called Krk and Rab.
The nude beaches of Krk
Krk is the most popular of the two islands, largely because it's so easy to access. As there is a bridge connecting the island to the mainland you don't need to pay for a ferry, and the international airport of Rijeka is located right on Krk island. Whether you're on a road trip or just having a quick vacation, it's very easy to put Krk on your itinerary.
Paradise Way
Most nude beaches in Krk are connected to a resort. Interestingly, it's not always a nude-friendly resort. We don't know the exact history of these places, but we imagine that these resorts may be among the ones that turned textile in previous years and where the nude beach remained.
An exception is Paradise Way, a stretch of coastline just south of Njivice town. Although the coast of the Croatian islands looks spectacular and, unlike many other tourist destinations in Europe, is still very natural, from a nude beach point of view we were not impressed. Mostly because Paradise Way consists of large sharp rocks, making comfortably sunbathing almost impossible. There are a handful of small coves with pebbles, but to get a spot in one of these you better arrive early in the day.
If you value peace and quiet and prefer to be away from other people while skinny dipping, Paradise Way may be something for you. But you need to be willing to take the scratches from the rocks as a memory.
Nude beaches in textile resorts
A bit further up the road, at the northern end of Njivice town, is Aminess Atea Camping Resort which has its own nude beach. Well, a nude section. First are the well-maintained textile beaches of the resort, then follows a dog beach with pebbles and further is the nude section which mostly consists of large sharp rocks, identical to those we found at Paradise Way.
Once again this is not a comfortable nude beach and unless you're staying at the resort and don't feel much for driving around, we wouldn't really recommend coming here. By now, you may be wondering if you just started reading a long rant about crappy nude beaches. Don't worry, we have the worst behind us.
In the south of the island, just east of Krk town, is Krk Premium Camping Resort. Another textile resort with an adjacent nude beach. This beach is much better maintained than the previous ones, with several plateaus and concrete spaces to sunbathe on. There are also showers and toilets and easy access points to the sea where you don't need to fear that you'll cut your feet.
Nude beaches in nude resorts
It probably doesn't come as a surprise that the best nude beaches on Krk island are found at the naturist resorts. One of them is Camp Konobe, just south of Punat town. Camp Konobe has several nude beaches, the main one with pebbles and a beach bar. The smaller beaches are either coves with pebbles or concrete plateaus.
Access to the beaches is obviously free for the guests of Camp Konobe, day visitors pay a 5€ per person entrance fee which includes the use of the camp facilities and beach chairs. You can park for free outside the resort or for another 10€ you can take your car down to the beach. An advantage of the latter is that you can store your clothes and valuables in the car and wander around the resort naked.
The most famous naturist resort in Krk is Bunculuka, which has its own long pebble nude beach. Beach chairs and umbrellas are available for rent, but you may need to come early to secure one. Day visitors can access the nude beach of Bunculuka for free by parking in Baška town and taking the easy 20-minute walk down.
The nude beach of Bunculuka is very popular and can become crowded on summer days. If you like more space or privacy, it's better to follow the hiking trail at the end of the beach, which will take you to more pebble beaches like Jablanova, Mali Raj, and Vela Vrzenica. Although these are not official nude beaches, we found that the most popular clothing choice was none at all. As this whole area is very nude-friendly, it's even quite common to do the hike in the nude.
What is FKK?
What we very much enjoyed about the nude beaches on both Krk and Rab is that they are very well-marked. The official ones often have signs explaining where the beach starts and ends and on the unofficial ones, you'll often find graffiti with the letters "FKK". If this is your first time going naked in this part of Europe, you may be wondering what's with all the FKK and why nobody wrote down naturist or nudist.
This is something historical. Naked tourism got a big boost in former Yugoslavia in the seventies largely because of German visitors. Back then, "FKK", which is short for FreiKörperKultur (Free Body Culture), was the most commonly used term for what people from other countries called naturism or nudism. The Croatians adopted this term and keep using it to mark places where it's common and accepted to be naked.
Where are the sandy beaches?
While you were reading about the nude beaches of Krk, you may have noticed that we talked a lot about rocks, pebbles, and concrete. In many people's minds, this is not what beaches are supposed to look like. In fact, someone left a disappointed comment on our video about these beaches, saying that we didn't show a single beach, because beaches are supposed to be sandy.
This is something typical about Croatia, very few beaches in the whole country have sand. You can find sandy beaches at resorts, but in most cases, these will be artificial. There are pros and cons to this. Croatian beaches may not look as idyllic as the sandy beaches that you find in Spain or France, but neither do you have to spend half an hour rinsing sand off your body when you leave the beach. The lack of sand is also the reason why the waters of the Adriatic Sea are so crystal clear.
What's most important about Croatian beaches is to come prepared. Water shoes are quite a must, not only to keep your feet safe from scratches but also because the rocks and pebbles are a favourite habitat of sea urchins. To sunbathe comfortably, it's recommended to bring beach chairs or mattresses and an umbrella. If sandy beaches are really your thing, you don't want to cancel your vacation to Croatia right here and now, because there are exceptions. One of them is Rab Island.
The nude beaches of Rab
Rab Island is less popular than its northern neighbour Krk, because the only way to access the island is by ferry. You can either choose between a 2-hour ferry ride from Rijeka, a one-hour ride from Krk, or a 15-minute ride from Stinica. This takes a bit of extra planning and brings an additional price tag, but once you get to Rab, you're about to discover a naked paradise.
The nude beaches of Lopar
Lopar is the most northern town of Rab Island and borders a large natural reserve with a maze of dirt roads and more than 20 beaches. All of these are sandy beaches and some of them are official nude beaches like Ciganka, Kunjka, Sahara, and Stolac. In our experience, also the other beaches are very nude-friendly as long as you move a bit away from the crowds. This isn't much of an issue because crowds are almost nonexistent on Rab.
The nude beaches of Lopar are among the most spectacular you can find in Croatia. Ciganka and Kunja in the west are located in a huge bay with shallow water that rarely gets deeper than one meter. This is perfect if you're not much of a swimmer or if you come with young children. Sahara and Stolac in the east then again look much more picturesque and give amazing views over the deep blue Adriatic Sea and the surrounding islands.
The nude beaches of Pudarica
Pudarica wasn't on our list that we carefully filled with information found on the internet and if it wasn't that we got a tip from a local, we would probably have never discovered these nude beaches. But we're so grateful that we did because the white sand and blue sea made us feel as if we were in the Caribbean rather than in Europe.
The main beach of Pudarica is 100% textile, but as soon as you wander off on the hiking trails or follow the coastline, you'll find several other beaches where you're likely to be alone or among a handful of naked people. Some of these beaches are only accessible by boat, which makes them even more secluded.
Kandarola Nude Beach
The last nude beach in Rab is the only non-sandy beach on our list, but that shouldn't be a reason to scratch it off your bucket list. On the contrary. Kandarola Beach is generally known as the world's first official nude beach, dating back to 1936. For the last 30 years, the Jurešić family has been maintaining the beach and the surrounding facilities to create a heaven on earth for naked visitors.
The best way to describe Kandarola Beach is as a naturist resort for day visits only. It has all the facilities of a medium-sized resort like a restaurant and bar, beach chairs and umbrellas, showers, toilets, a volleyball court, a small pool and a 300-meter stretch of designated nude beach. The only thing they don't provide is accommodation or a place to camp on the domain. To spend a day at Kandarola, you pay 5€ which includes parking and use of all the facilities.
While the "official" nude beach is only 300 meters, if you follow the trails at either end of the beach you'll find plenty of other small beaches and coves where nude is still the dress code.
Friendly Rab
Rab is nicknamed "the happy island", which dates back to Roman times. If we look at more recent times, "the friendly island" might actually be a more accurate name. The people of Rab are known to be very accepting of all, no matter race, gender, sexual preference, or how many clothes you choose (not) to wear. And they are very proud of this. We heard several stories of foreigners moving to Rab and immediately being included in the community as if they were long-lost family members.
Rab island was also home to the first gay bar in Croatia and this attitude of the people of Rab may well be the reason why the world's first nude beach was established here and why nudity is so common on many beaches, also those that are not known as nude beaches. Of course, the fact that the people of Rab are very accepting of everyone's personal choices doesn't mean that we should take advantage of that. Respect goes both ways and we're sure that if we don't push it (read: don't walk around naked in Rab's historical centre), this island will remain a nude paradise for a long time to come.
