From the Green Room To Green Tourism

The hard truth is that surfer boys and surfer girls have a bit of a rep. No matter where you are in the world, the surf crew always gives you the vibe of being super chilled, confident and, well, for want of a better word, hot. Attractive. Downright dreamy in a bad- boy/girl kind of way. Unkempt sea-washed hair, bronzed toned skin, a slightly blasé attitude towards life and society and ‘the man’. Oh and skills with a board. It just doesn’t get much better.

The surf crew always gives you a vibe of being super chilled

Enter Roots Surf Festival. All of the above + an environmentally friendly, green and socially aware surf festival, complete with bongo drums. It’s like handing a topless male model a puppy and watching him help an old lady across the road. For the guys, it’s like putting a bikini-clad Brazilian beauty on a 1000CC motorbike.

Intrigued? Well, here’s the gist. Roots Surf Festival has teamed up with Stoke Travel Co. and together they are putting on sustainable surf weeks in Morocco and Spain. The tagline of Roots Surf is ‘International Surf Festival dedicated to Ocean Conservation, Independent Music, Workshops & Good Vibes!’. Stoke Travel aims for ‘open-minded travel for party internationals’. Basically you get to surf for a week, hang out with awesome people, express yourself in whatever way you like and walk away being the good guy/gal because you’ve contributed to Mother Earth.

The conservation aspect comes in optional workshops, beach cleanups and the way in which the festival is run. The organisers source local produce and employment from the local area as much as possible, they recycle, re-use, and calculate the carbon footprint at the end of the festival, then go out planting trees to offset this. It’s surf tourism with a conscience and has already had a successful impact in Morocco. Conservation is the new cool, so it’s no wonder surfers are picking up on this vibe. After all, their whole passion revolves around the biggest part of the planet: the ocean.

By Lisa Parsons

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