After trekking on Mount Hood, hikers are passed a bowl of Venezuelan chicken soup. After popping out of the Deschutes, rafts in tow, participants in life jackets dance in the parking lot to reggaeton booming out of a car stereo (think “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee). 

The car stereo and soup bowls belong to Maria Teresa Lopes, co-owner of adventure company Loco por la Aventura, which guides hiking, mountaineering, snowshoeing, rafting, camping, mountain biking, and rock climbing trips—all in Spanish. This spring, the Gresham-based company is partnering with Mazamas, a 130-year-old mountaineering nonprofit, to teach a two-month basic climbing course in Spanish. 

Sure, many Portland adventure companies facilitate outdoor endeavors. But Lopes and husband Anibal Rocheta are political refugees from Venezuela, and their mission is to help the local Latino community access outdoor recreation. “In our community, there’s a belief that recreating outside is just for white people,” says Lopes. “We show them differently: that there are no limits to engaging in outdoor activities.” 

Lopes, 35, and co-owner Rocheta, 39, are a part of a wave of immigration to Willamette Valley: just 2 percent of Oregonians identified as Hispanic or Latino in 1980, a figure that was 14 percent in 2020, according to the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis. “Our aim is to get folks out there vibing with nature,” says Rocheta.

The couple met in northern Venezuela in 2010, when Rocheta was guiding a caving trip in the Sierra de San Luis. (He gave Lopes a belay test. “Our friends make lots of jokes about how we started dating,” he says.) At the time he was guiding mountaineering, rock climbing, canyoneering, and spelunking trips, and she was writing and producing television shows. Four years later, they married and decamped to Portland for six months, so Lopes could improve her English at the Portland English Language Academy. “We chose Portland because it was near the Cascade Range. We needed to be near mountains,” says Rocheta. “And the people here ended up being really friendly.” 

They returned to Venezuela, and then sought asylum from political unrest. “We wanted to be in a place that offers young entrepreneurs a chance to thrive,” says Lopes, who still misses her large family and the tropical winters in her home state of Falcón. They founded Loco por la Aventura in 2020, a difficult year to launch a business. By 2023, their trips filled up, usually through word of mouth, social media, and a newsletter with over 1,500 subscribers. “On social media, people saw our adventures and wanted to go, too,” says Lopes. 

While language, financial, and transportation limitations can impede enjoying the outdoors, Loco for la Aventura aims to keep its trips affordable and accessible. Participants frequently meet up in Portland, and carpool to trailheads together. Sometimes the group pulls on partnerships with local businesses and anonymous sponsors. In November, Adidas named Loco to its Community Lab, a program for Black and Latino visionaries, right on the heels of Rocheta launching his first book, Nadie logra lo que no se atreve (Nothing Ventured Nothing Gained), which he says is the first book on mountaineering written in Spanish and published in the U.S. 

For a duo who make their living in the mountains, the couple are remarkably present in Portland, both professionally and socially. “Anibal and Maria are everywhere doing everything. I joke that Maria will be the mayor of Portland,” says Victor Bencomo, a native Venezuelan and an analyst for US Bank who often goes bouldering at a gym in Gresham with friends he made through Loco trips. “They show how cool these activities are and convince you that you can do them.”