Mark Sundeen walks past an old Lighthouse by the Black Sea.The Ukraine.

Despite the sideshow horror of sudak, it was easy to see why the Crimean coast has been so prized. Walking along the spectacular cliffs, we stopped for lunch where the tide rose over barnacled boulders and swam out into the cool green pools. We continued hiking toward a windblown cape with a crumbling lighthouse; clear emerald water lapped at pebble beaches in pocket coves below.

Mark Sundeen enjoys Dysentery Beach.

One day Andrew and I rode in the bus to photograph the crew, so we arrived at the tiny beach resort of Morskoye a few hours before the others. It was like Atlantic City gone to seed. Trash was scattered everywhere on the beach: plastic beer bottles and heaps of rotting watermelon rinds, moldy sneakers and garbage bags stuffed full of picnic leftovers. Tinny synth-pop blasting from a cafe was like the soundtrack of someone’s struggle with insanity. Graffiti scrawled on a cement wall along the boardwalk translated as a warning that litterers would be fined. Hulking over it all was the orb-shaped concrete husk of a luxury hotel, abandoned after the Soviet Union fell. An idle crane poked toward the sky. It looked like the Death Star.
Valiery parked the bus on what we would come to call Dysentery Beach, where scraps of toilet paper fluttered in the wind like prayer flags. A stinking outhouse induced the gag reflex at a distance of 20 feet. Nevertheless Olga and Roman began to unload the bus. Well, here we are, they seemed to say, motioning at us to come along and start enjoying camp. They looked happy to be sharing the beauty of their country.
Andrew and I, groggy from the bus fumes, just smushed our noses against the window and peered out at a murky creek trickling over waterlogged grocery sacks. He and I were accustomed to sketchy roadside bivys, but even we agreed that if we were to come upon this beach late at night, needing a place to crash, we would just keep rolling. As for the paying clients whose arrival was imminent, they were doctors and investment bankers who came to Crimea equipped with UV-blocking hiking pants with zip-off legs, not haz-mat suits. Such world travelers might brave Himalayan blizzards and alligator-infested rapids, but there was no chance they were going to sleep next to someone else’s shit. My meager Russian was not nearly up to the task of tactfully explaining this to the busy Crimean crew, so I pitched my tent amid the garbage, crawled inside, and cracked open a cold bottle of Hike.

Rob, Gia, and the others arrived at Dysentery Beach a little while later, and the look of disappointment — horror, really — on their faces was memorable. “Is this the camp?” said someone, hesitantly. It was. After a sullen dinner, eaten on folding chairs in the shadow of the Death Star, Rob averted mutiny by loading us into the smoking blue cupcake bus and checking us into a hotel.
“In Soviet times there were more regulations, and people followed the rules,” Sergei told us, removing his glasses and rubbing his eyes. “But now it is like anarchy.”
When Americans travel abroad, we always yearn to discover “unspoiled” places, such as mythical Tuscan villages or tiny Caribbean islands unsullied by other American tourists. But here’s the thing about the Crimean coast: It was spoiled when we found it. Two centuries of Slavic-style tourism had done some damage.
But then again, who was I to be self-righteous? Sure, the stinking trash heaps on the beach were a bummer, but ultimately they would be a lot easier to remedy than the mansions, refineries, and freeways that blight the coast of California. And more to the point: The Ukrainians have just cast off the shackles of almost a century of dictatorship. Let them throw a little trash. The funny thing about freedom is that once people get the idea they’ve been liberated, they start acting as if they’re free, at which point, well, maybe they are. So go ahead, drive your Lada onto the beach, slip into your banana hammock, start a bonfire, take a dump in the sand, crank up the techno, and chuck a bottle down the beach. One definition of freedom is simply breaking the rules and doing whatever the hell you want. All we needed were some yahoos revving up jet skis and firing guns, and it would be just like spring break on the “Redneck Riviera,” the Florida Panhandle.