Nudists can save your life.
"Here—it's the nude-people camp," Pat said, leaning over to point at the map we'd spread on the sand. "If you want to get water, though, you must be naked. It's not a problem for me."It was several hours after Bagé's coiffing, and we'd been slogging through sand so hot that it calved in chunks under our feet. My mouth was dry, and I had the beginnings of a nasty headache. Pat, looking like a ragtag Lawrence of Arabia with a blue-and-white-striped picnic napkin wrapped around his head, estimated that the Domaine Residentiel Naturiste de La Jenny was a few miles farther.

About an hour and a half later, we came upon the first of them, sprawled out like pink seals. They were all men, lying on their stomachs on towels, their buns roasting in the sun. As we passed, each one seemed automatically to flip over, as if our arrival had triggered a silent timer on a tanning oven. They stared at us without speaking. I stared at my feet.

Soon we reached the heart of the resort. Nude grandparents played bocce ball, nude kids boogie-boarded, and nude people of all ages, sizes, and colors lounged. We spotted a lifeguard perched on a chair in the bed of a pickup and shuffled over to ask about water. Luckily, given his position relative to ours, he was clothed, and he pointed us toward the bathhouses, atop a dune at the end of a long set of wooden stairs. As Bagé, Martin, and I gathered the bags and began wading through the sea of skin, Pat dropped trou and lit a cigarette.

On a large wooden deck outside the bathhouses, we found two open-air showers and a knee-high blue spigot with drinking water. We took turns gulping straight from it and filled the bags, then, in the spirit of the place, I stepped out of my trunks and took a shower. The same wasn't good enough for Bagé. He found a plastic bucket, filled it with the potable water, and started washing his hair.

This time, Martin didn't mutter: "What the fuck, dude?!"

Don't bury your food next to a helipad.
We'd left the Domaine Residentiel Naturiste in good spirits. The swell was steadily building, and we were looking forward to a pre-dinner session. But as we approached our fourth camping spot, near a concrete helicopter pad at the end of an access road, we made out three police trucks, an ambulance, and a blue-and-white rescue helicopter. When we got closer, we could see a few dozen onlookers and, near them, a man kneeling and pumping the chest of a lifeless woman in a wetsuit. She'd drowned while surfing.

We had no interest in sticking around, but we had no choice: Our food was buried beside the idling chopper.

Around sunset, the medics and gawkers cleared out and we unearthed our food, but we all felt uncomfortable camping right where a woman had just taken her last breath. Plus, the incident had attracted police and rangers who might not appreciate our surf-gypsy caravan. We pushed on.

Two hours later we found a spot to camp in the dark. It had been a nine-mile day, by far the longest of our expedition.

There are cultural differences regarding the proper refrigeration of dairy products.
I will concede that deep sand provides some cooling. But in the last days of the trip, we dug up increasingly suspect portions of cheese, yogurt, and milk. Worse, we carried the leftovers in one of those soft-sided cooler bags, which functioned more like a steamer in the heat. Still, Pat, Bagé, and, at times, Martin took long pulls of 75-degree whole milk. Troy and I marveled at their intestinal fortitude.

During a dinner near the end of the week, I set out some ripening Roquefort, Brie, and Camembert, and Troy, feeling the courage of half a bottle of Médoc, decided to go native.

"Fromage-y boy, hit me," he said. "Give me that double-hard Roquello … Roquefort … whatever it's called."

I scraped some on a baguette and handed it over. He took a bite and instantly recoiled. "Oh!" he blurted. "That's strong."

"Come on, afraid by a cheese?" asked Pat incredulously. "If I tell this story to my friends, nobody would believe me. Incredible. Frightened by a cheese!"

If you walk it, the waves will come.
"No wind," Bagé said as we scanned the crashing chest-high peelers and bluebird sky that greeted us on our sixth morning.

"And nobody out," Troy added, grabbing his board.

After almost a week of trekking, and despite mostly unsatisfying surf, we had come to enjoy the workings of the well-oiled machine that we'd become. Everyone pitched in to prepare food, wash dishes, and set up and break down camp. When the tide was low, we walked. When night came, we slept on the beach. Now, it seemed, the surf gods were rewarding our patience.

For five hours we shared the waves, swapping boards and taking short breaks to lie in the sun. At around two in the afternoon, the wind came ashore, ending the party. But by that point nobody cared.