Intrepid101

While being being towed by airplane to 3000 feet in a Grob Twin Astir glider at the Hastings Gliding Club, I knew something wasn’t quite right.
I’ve been up in gliders a couple of times before – one fabulous towed trip at Thames and one mostly pointless winched launch at Drury. My winch launch lasted about [...]

The glistening longfin eel slides its head up out of the water and looks at me expectantly. I scrape a bit of ground beef onto my stick and hold it out for him. He rasps the meat off and gulps it down. While he has a snack, I pet him on his velvety back, like [...]

Want to blokart without the muss and fuss of sand and worrying about the tides and wind direction? Concerned you need a harder surface than sand for blokarting given your weight?
We’ve discovered a new BloKarting venue and I’ve seen a gentleman who was a good 300 lbs zipping along happily with good wind and the [...]

Strapped into a Pitts Special S2B stunt plane I’m worried I’ll throw up during the aerobatics so I clutch the sick bag with sweaty hands. I should have worn dark coloured pants. What if I, um, wet myself? Or worse?!
I’ve never flown in anything smaller than a twin engine turbo-prop before, so what do I [...]

BloKarting on Muriwai’s black sand beach is tremendously accessible. Even your intrepid plus sized guide handles it gracefully.

The rules are simple. Climb onto the cart ending in a reclined position. Strap on helmet. Strap into safety belt. Grab the rope, pull in to go faster, let it out to go slower. Steer with handle. Turn INTO the wind (towards the water) when changing directions. Lesson over. Away you go.

Plunging our paddles into the crystal blue water, we nudge the double kayak into Abel Tasman Marine Reserve. After rounding the point towards Shag Harbour, Andy the curly headed guide from Kahu Kayaks calls out, “Seal on the rocks.”
Sleek and dark, the young New Zealand fur seal suns himself on the boulders. He decides he [...]

Time Warp Post: Dateline June 12, 2004- directly after Helicopter Flying Lesson.
Hopping into an imported Japanese kindergarten bus covered with katakana Japanese writing and bubble-faced
cartoon characters. Isn’t that how all adventures start? With Hello Kitty?
Hello Kitty bus driver deposits the cheerful adventurers to a shed like a barrel made of corrugated iron and cut in [...]

This entry is part 2 of 3 in the series ImmigrationYou’ve decided you want to move to New Zealand. Great. One of the easiest ways to get a New Zealand work visa is to do what I did and enter as a Skilled Migrant.
New Zealand has many people who want to immigrate from refugees to [...]