Our Shamarou Beach Day Disaster: What Went Wrong

I'm still trying to process our recent beach trip to Shamarou, and I'm not sure where to start. We headed to Shamarou, a beach just 23 kilometers from Vladivostok, and it's an amazing spot for a beach day, but things didn't exactly go as planned.A few bays with parking are available, but be prepared to pay 150 rubles at the moment. The sea is gentle, with a perfectly balanced depth: shallow near the shore, so kids can play safely, and adults don't have to swim far to get to deeper water. The water is warm, the waves are great, and we love surfing in them. The beach is sandy, and building sandcastles is a lot of fun.The infrastructure is well-developed: there are rest houses, plenty of shashlik vendors, trampolines, and pools with boats for kids (300 rubles for 20 minutes of fun). You can also find vendors selling kebabs (but be warned, they're not the best) and corn (I haven't tried it, though).When it comes to parking: it's paid, but if you're feeling lucky, you can park on the side of the road if you find a spot.Despite the crowds, the beach is surprisingly clean, with staff regularly cleaning up after visitors. However, it's impossible to keep the entire area spotless (and it's not just the cleaning staff's fault – it's a bigger issue with our society's tendency to litter anywhere and everywhere). My husband even found a surprise in the sand: a small, 2-centimeter glass shard. It was stuck in his foot, and it was quite a surprise!There are free changing rooms available. As for the toilets, there aren't any free ones within sight. I won't even guess what the clever visitors use instead. The smell in the changing rooms is pretty strong, so it's better to wrap yourself in a towel before changing. There are paid toilets near the shashlik vendors, but we didn't use them during our two-hour stay.That's a quick rundown of the pros – now, let's talk about the cons.

Beach popularity: it's impossible to get a spot on a Saturday, it's just chaos, a nightmare for social phobes.This is a direct result of point 1: how to get there? There are fewer buses than people wanting to go, they're packed to the brim, and the road leading to the chaos is a single lane, three-hour traffic jam – no big deal. They recently built another road with Tikhaya, but it seems not many people know about it, as there are significantly fewer cars on it.This point is a result of the pros. The warm water, the gentle beach, minimal waves = sea monsters!!! Not the healthy and harmless kind, but tiny, venomous critters called jellyfish, which can send you to the afterlife with multiple stings. That's why I prefer the sea in bad weather – in the cold and waves, the likelihood of encountering the little pests is lower.But I've listed the cons of almost every popular beach, so we decided to head somewhere further, at least to Russky? We literally decided to go swimming last week. We picked a day, arrived, got soaked to the bone, and left, happy as clams. The next day, my little one started to get cranky. 'Teeth' – we thought. Another day, her legs broke out in blisters.Ringworm – we thought. 'Classic ringworm' – the ambulance said, 'the peak will be in two days'. There was no peak, the rash didn't spread further. Meanwhile, my son complained of mouth pain, and I found a classic white sore from stomatitis, thanks to the Holisal I always keep in the fridge. Three days later, thanks to Holisal, the sore healed. And just as I was finishing up, the doctor from the polyclinic arrived. 'What a ringworm. Congratulations, you've caught the infection, apparently. Yes, yes, stomatitis in the mouth is also it. Yes, I've had cases like this after local beaches with kids.' The next day, my eldest, who we brought (my husband's brother), complained of a rash: he broke out in the same blisters on his legs and hands. As of now, after Viferon and Zelenka, my little one is doing better, thank God, no new rash has been detected, so, phew, we got away without skin cream. But I'm still on edge and check the kids thirty times a day.I've been thinking a lot about how we figured out who got sick out of the five of us. By the time we got back from the beach around 11 pm, the little one was sleeping without any rash, she hadn't been swimming at all, just crawled onto the sand once – we let her sleep in, no need to wake her up to take a bath. I immediately put my son in the shower and he just got a small mouth sore. My husband and I showered right after him and we didn't get sick. But our older kid refused to go in the shower, and we didn't force him – he showered at home the next day and got sick too.

So, here's what I learned: if you do end up going to Shamarou, make sure to shower thoroughly with soap right after! Especially the kids. Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way – (don't think we're dirty people and don't shower after the beach, but after a clean, good beach day it's just saltiness, not full-body rashes) And many beach bases don't even have showers, like the one we stayed at on Popov Island last year – the only hot shower was available only once a day in the evening, so we were salty and happy until evening and had to take a cold shower to wash off the salt.

And yes, I'm not going back to Shamarou anytime soon. And don't even get me started on beach bases on Shamarou – if you can afford a beach base, it's way safer and less crowded to drive to Livadia or the islands.

So, I wouldn't recommend Shamarou, despite the great beach – it's just not safe.

Five for the quality of the sea, minus three for the infection we caught.

For the sea, though.