NuAdventure: Pioneering Sustainable Adventure Travel in Sardinia

Our Interview on Ojos De Muscas About NuAdventure, our Sustainable Tourism Project born in Sardinia.

This interview carries the essence of adventure, connection with nature, and living in the moment. The partnership between Fabrizio and Lohene gave life to NuAdventure, a sustainable travel project in Sardinia that combines various sports disciplines related to the four elements—air, water, earth, and fire—through a holistic approach.

Welcome, guys! Tell us about yourselves 🙂

We are travelers, adventurers, sports enthusiasts, and lovers of nature, adrenaline, and beauty. We turned our passion for sports, nature, and Sardinia into our profession and lifestyle. We are Fabrizio and Lohene, the founders of NuAdventure. Our project was born from our meeting right here on the island. Lohene was returning to her island, the land where she grew up and where she and her family had run a tourism business in Bosa for several years. After various trips around Europe, seeking new experiences and training in holistic fields, she became a yoga teacher and decided to return to Sardinia to start a new chapter. Fabrizio, an outdoor sports enthusiast and traveler, after years of working in communications and living an “urban” life, chose the island to rediscover himself. It was during one of his trips to Sardinia, where he was looking for new adventures connected to the various sports he practices, that he met Lohene, and from this “chance” encounter, everything began.

How did the idea to create sustainable trips come about, and what does it entail?

NuAdventure was born from the union of our passions for various sports disciplines, our love for nature, and this magical island. From the desire to share all this with others. From the desire to help people reconnect with nature. Exploration, movement, sports, nature, and the environment—these are the values upon which the NuAdventure project is founded. NuAdventure promotes sports, sports tourism, and environmental awareness activities related to the marine environment and other areas of natural and cultural interest in Sardinia. The project is guided by a perspective of sustainability, with particular attention to enhancing traditional activities, local cultures, and eco-compatible tourism in Sardinia.

Your adventures are characterized by respect, beauty, and sustainability, and I am very sensitive to these issues. Would you define your tours as experiential and slow tourism? Is that correct?

Yes, absolutely. What we offer are experiences, a mix of elements that allow people to experience the island in a unique way, and that’s also why we move in very small groups and use physical energy as much as possible to move around and explore the island. By sea with SUPs, by land on foot, or in the air with the power of the wind through paragliding. Even through Yoga in nature, being in wild and remote environments helps the people who choose us to rediscover that inner contact with themselves and the environment, taking back the time that often seems lost in the speed of modern society. We also care about the food aspect by choosing to collaborate with local businesses and highlighting small productions, sometimes even visiting shepherds or housewives who show us how to make fresh cheese or how to knead pasta at home, again to promote a healthier relationship with food, which is also part of our formula for longevity.

Outdoor activity enthusiasts have a moral duty to take care of and protect natural environments for ourselves and future generations.

As for eco-sustainable travel in Sardinia, is there really a need for it? Specifically, how do you reduce your environmental impact?

From choosing our equipment to reducing the use of motor vehicles, to organizing awareness events for our community, such as land and water (sea and river) coast clean-ups. These are the places we live in daily with our adventures and that we want to help preserve for future generations.

Our commitment is to RESPONSIBLE TRAVEL. Our responsibility is to ensure that our trips have positive effects on the local culture. This means moderating the influence of travelers to avoid mass tourism. We are proud to state that all our partners are family-run businesses that live locally and for whom tourism is just one of their sources of income.

We adhere to the Leave No Trace philosophy: “Leave a place better than we found it.”

What are the desirable behaviors and what should be avoided to respect the places we visit?

Leave no trace of your passage, be ready to take home any kind of trash you produce, respect the local wildlife, and do not pick flowers or plants.

Seven principles of the “Leave No Trace” philosophy:

• PLAN AND PREPARE BEFORE THE TRIP
• RESPECT OTHER TRAVELERS AND LOCAL PEOPLE
• TRAVEL AND CAMP ON DURABLE SURFACES
• LEAVE WHAT YOU FIND, OR BETTER
• MINIMIZE CAMPFIRE IMPACTS AND DISPOSE OF WASTE PROPERLY
• RESPECT WILDLIFE
• BE CONSIDERATE OF OTHER VISITORS

Sustainable tourism means respecting the environment but also preserving the culture and local population. What balance have you found in your offer of eco-sustainable trips?

During our activities, we always try to create this connection between the territory and the people who live there, and this is exactly what makes the experience unique, entering into the local culture is an integral part of the trip in order to enhance and make the experience truly unforgettable. We do this, as mentioned before, for example after a long trek in the Supramonte that takes us to the shepherd’s ‘cuile’ who shows us his life and prepares us a traditional dinner with ‘maialetto’ cooked on the ground with fire or following the routes of fishermen who from the river of Bosa head every day towards the sea to fish. We retracing with our boards the same waters, find ourselves at the end of the day eating the fish they caught.

Is there a country that inspires you?

Several countries inspire us and that could be a model of reference for Sardinia, New Zealand, the Canary Islands, the island of Madeira, the Azores, La Reunion, and others examples from which it would be enough to draw to have some tools for comparison and inspiration to also have guidelines for Sardinia for a project that could lead to the creation of its identity, which the island already has written in its DNA. In our opinion, it still needs to be communicated and shared with the world.

What is an itinerary you would recommend? A place close to your heart 🙂

The fact that we move a lot and that we are itinerant on the island makes us have several places in our hearts, it seems obvious but the island is really all beautiful and surprising just because it is rich in diversity, probably one of its strengths is just this!

Clearly in our heart, there is Bosa where we have our base with its navigable river and its wild coast, but also the Gulf of Orosei and all the Supramonte to which we are very attached, we mention only two but only because you asked us for one 😉

Thank you very much guys, I hope to come and visit you soon.

Fabrizio & Lohene 💚💛

Founders of NuAdventure

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