Fun Activities Azores Adventure
How the minimum criteria of the responsible travel standard was met...
Economic responsibility
As our company is based in the Azores (Portugal) most of the guides we employ are Portuguese (who can sometimes speak a bit of Spanish, English, or French). But we employ guides from other countries as well, in the form of exchanges, partnerships or internships.
Although we prefer to negotiate with partners / companies that: are managed by locals; have development and incentive policies for local workers; and buy local products - that’s not an exclusion factor. Last year (2019), for example, we developed for the first time a social reintegration project (which will be repeated this year, and in the next ones, we hope) to promote social insertion of people in diverse life situations, helping them monetarily for the excellent help they gave us on the preparation and execution of the activities we provide.
Whenever a client asks for suggestions or services we can’t / don’t provide, we always head them to / give them the contact of some partner / company who can.
Environmental responsibility
On
our daily life (at the office, or in nature) we always recycle or even reuse
the little garbage we make. At the office itself, besides having specific
garbage cans for each type of material, there’s only one active computer
through which we do all the work digitally, avoiding, whenever possible,
printing anything at all. Regarding our clients, they are always advised to
bring their own individual reusable water bottles for the activities (just like
our team does), as we usually run into good quality natural water springs and
almost never have access to any shops (where there are water bottles for sale
or trash cans to dispose of them) during our excursions. Apart from that,
we give them the possibility of purchasing, for an additional cost, a
personalized and very simple reusable water / coffee / tea canteen OR cup, so
they can help our local environment and, at the same time, take back home a handsome
souvenir that will always remember them of the magnificent time they spent at
the Azores. Most of our guides live
far away from the office and our activities usually take place quite far away
from where our warehouse is based as well, so most of us resort to our
day-to-day cars or public transports. Besides that, the vans we use for picking
up our clients aren’t quite recent or modern, so we don’t really have a choice
there. But sometimes we use our bikes / e-bikes, as for bike tours, as for
personal usage (whenever possible). Apart from that, we always resort to
local growers and local food companies to provide us with local snacks and lunches
(which our clients love), or even book / suggest a dinner or meeting in local
restaurants / bars / taverns.
The protected areas that they will visit have some rules regarding the access ( we need to ask permits for some of them and during part of the year some areas is not possible to visit ).
- Still regarding the previous point some areas are just possible to visit with a Guide formed by the azorean environment department. Our "Guias de Parque Natural of S.Miguel island" will provide detailed information about the biodiversity of the place and the landscape
Social responsibility
We encourage our clients to explore already discovered places / trails and discourage them to go wandering alone in the wilderness, but always tell them to be careful and aware of the Azores’ protected areas / landscapes and species (specially the endangered ones). And whenever we can’t provide a service they ask us for, we always suggest local partners who can.
Regarding our cultural richness, we always try to include in out excursions or simply suggest various destination visits to appropriate local social projects with direct benefits to the host community, specially when it comes to local hand-made souvenirs and gastronomy.
protection
