Chapter 2 - Paradise Island

WITH FINANCIAL STABILITY also came the time to enjoy the pleasures of the tourism profession. So, Celso and I started to travel around Brazil and the world as travel agents for our own company. We had hired several top employees to do that job, our task might just be to sit in the third floor office and manage the profits, but how could we resist packages that included a hotel in Miami, transfers from Italy to Vienna or even an end of whole week enjoying the beaches of Recife?

At that time, thanks to our business success, the land began to be fertile with interested women and we began to fill our personal social networks with photos of the most beautiful landscapes, accompanied, the two of us, by the most beautiful girls.

Since I was a teenager, I had acquired a taste for working out and took very good care of my body. He did the “healed” type without much exaggeration. Defined arms, fat-free abs, legs toned by bodybuilding and a face that wouldn't leave anything to be desired by any movie star.

Celso was a little smaller than me, but he was stronger. Unlike me, he liked to show off the hair on his defined chest and, despite being a little lazy about lifting weights, he also went to the gym regularly. We both had the body type that every girl dreamed of and we knew that in terms of charm, we were privileged. The “successful handsome” combination quickly became a big attraction for the opposite sex and as the Vecchio Tour grew, so did the suitors that knocked on our door.

In that short space of time, I had two girlfriends, Shanaya and Cibele, but none of them had been able to withstand my intense pace of travel and constant changes of address due to work with the agency. Celso ended up settling down with a beautiful brunette he met in Bahia — and who he later brought to live with him in São Paulo —, but I preferred to remain single, enjoying everything that the Vecchio Tour offered me almost without limits.

Still during that youthful excitement, I decided to develop in our territory something that, at first, would only be among friends and acquaintances, but that maintained that atmosphere of “eternal teenage party” in which I was living, intoxicated by professional success. On one of my company trips, I had visited a naturist beach in Spain that had made me want to do something similar in Brazil, and with the help of Celso and another friend of ours called Wagner Vieira, we started planning naturist meetings on an island from the north coast of São Paulo, the island of Itajubá.

My father always talked about that huge piece of land he had inherited from Grandpa Roman since my childhood, still in the neighborhood of Perdizes, but I had never visited the place. Before the divorce, my mother dreamed that her husband would build a summer house for the family to spend their holidays on the island, but for some reason, the old man seemed to have a tremendous unwillingness to move even a straw in that attempt. When Celso and I decided to visit the place for the first time, we were sure that we had found the exact spot for the naturist parties we intended to organize and in the following weeks, there was no shortage of fans to embark on our idea.

The first meeting brought together only our friends, the closest people we knew from college, school or work and that served as a thermometer for us to have an idea of what would come ahead. From the second meeting, the business began to become more professional, and both Celso and Wagner managed to co-opt several paying guests to the island, the vast majority attracted by the “word of mouth” generated by the first tour.

Nalanda Venâncio was one of Celso's friends who ended up becoming a key player in the success of our endeavor and it was her idea to create a kind of initiation ritual for each new member of the naturist community who visited the island. She was a Tourism student who attended the same college as us, belonging to another class and we had met in a bar, at a student social. Very communicative and expansive, she did the job interview to join the team at our agency in São Paulo after being invited by Celso and passed with all the merits.

“Think of something like a rite of passage or a cult baptism ritual,” began to argue the beautiful girl with the dark skin, sparkling green eyes and beautiful golden curly locks in front of us, “we can smear the newbies with some kind of aphrodisiac flavoring oil and then dip them in the sea, something that acts as a purification, an approval from the gods of the seas before they are accepted into our community. We can use names of deities linked to the oceans, like Neptune, Poseidon or Andromeda for the priests and priestesses of the ritual... - The idea had been developed entirely by her. Nalanda explained this with a twinkle in her eyes and a radiant smile on her face.

— It will work as something symbolic, but it will convey the idea of originality that you want so much for the meetings.

She concluded. Celso and I couldn't have been more excited.

The rules for the biannual meetings on the island of Itajubá were very simple and differentiated our naturist community from all others that existed around the world. We were developing a democratic space so that our guests could detach themselves from the social ties established elsewhere and where everyone could enjoy their total freedom, without restrictions, in an exotic and paradisiacal setting.

After the second meeting, we discovered that our intent had worked very well. When the holidays arrived, it rained people interested in embarking towards our “Island of Paradise” and the travel packages to Itajubá always appeared among the most sought after of the year. When an excursion ended, we already had huge waiting lists for the next ones and the naturist itinerary became one of the biggest sales successes of the Vecchio Tour.

The open-air rave we'd set up on the sand beach would go on until the wee hours of the morning, and once inside there was no way out, at least not until the next day, when we used my dad's Phoenix 275 to take our guests back. to the nearest port.

The trips to the beach worked as a common excursion, where through the Vecchio Tour, we provided adequate transport for travelers to arrive and leave the island as safely as possible. Our only requirement was for secrecy outside, since we knew well that, as the rules on the island were flexible, all kinds of involvement between the excursionists ended up happening during the parties that took place on the two days of the weekend, which could displease the most conservative. Our audience varied a lot from semester to semester, but in general, the age range of people who attended the community was between 18 and 30 years old. Those looking for the package were, for the most part, single, cool and willing to open relationships.

"We have no prejudices!"

Celso once said, between laughs, when accounting for the profits obtained on one of our excursions.

— Can we afford the sound system, the DJ and the stability of the tents with the accommodations for the next season?

I was very concerned about the comfort of visitors to the island, but both Celso and Nalanda took care of the operational part very well, allowing me to just have fun during the raves.

— We have enough money to make the next excursions even more perfect.

It was the kind of thing I liked to hear. Business couldn't be doing better than this.