The Pura Aventura story
21 years of bumpy beauty
From a chance meeting in Patagonia in 1995 to our pioneering action on carbon to a fridge magnet collection to be proud of, ours is a story like no other.
Our story
Pura Aventura has been inspiring people to travel to Spain, Portugal and Latin America since 1999 with active vacations made exceptional, personal and planet positive.
It all started with a chance meeting of a Brit, a Spaniard and a Basque in Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park. After weeks of hiking across the park the Spaniard, Diego, stayed on as a park guard, the Basque, Xabi, went back to trailblazing river routes into the park and the Brit, Tom, took the slow road home by hitchhiking the 3,300km back to Santiago airport.
As Diego learned how to protect the precious ecosystems and Xabi worked with visitors to deliver the best experiences, Tom was experiencing the kindness of strangers. Each, in their own way, accumulating a debt of gratitude. Pura Aventura was established precisely to share places which have moved us and to do so in a way which protects and benefits them. Working directly with a huge number of partners overseas allows us to achieve this while also creating truly unique and special vacations. There isn’t very much on this site which can be found elsewhere. This is what we mean by exceptional.
Over the past 21 years, we have gradually expanded out from Patagonia to offer more of Latin America as well as Spain, Portugal and Antarctica. However, we remain, at heart, a family business. Admittedly, it’s a modern, pan-European blended affair, but it feels like a family. Our community absolutely extends to our partners overseas and to our clients, many of whom we count as friends. When we share a place, it is more usually the case that we are brokering an introduction between our guests and our partners. This is what we mean by personal.
In late 2019 Pura Aventura hosted the European launch of Patagonia’s Route of Parks, the world’s most ambitious conservation tourism project. From Puerto Montt to Cape Horn, it covers 2,700km of southern South America, 28 million acres protected in 17 national parks, encompassing 24 ecosystems, 200 species of birds and mammals and home to 60 communities. It is exactly where, and why, Pura Aventura started. Patagonia is second only to the Amazon in terms of carbon sequestration from our atmosphere, preserving it through thoughtful small-scale tourism is of vital importance. This is what we mean by planet positive.
What we do, how and where we do it all still speaks to that original debt of gratitude sparked by the kindness of strangers, the excitement of discovery and the beauty of nature.*
*If you are imagining an office thick with incense and whale song, don’t. We may be a values driven organization but that doesn’t stop us being diverse, smart and experienced. It also doesn’t stop us laughing, a lot. Pura Aventura is a business built around delivering great value to its clients whilst also looking after our team, our partners and our planet.
