Life Experiencer

As a New Zealander adventure, natural living, a connection with the environment and a desire to see the world is part of my DNA.  It is for this reason that experiencing life and discovering what the world has to offer has been a cornerstone for how I have lived life over the last 25 years. I fully believe life is to be experienced and am on a mission to ensure that when looking back over my life I can say that I lived fully and have no regrets.

My personal journey as an experiencer of life started in my early 20’s when I left New Zealand for the first time to play rugby in the United States. Nearly 25 years later I have yet to return to New Zealand. I have now lived in 6 different countries and travelled to close to 20, and along the way had countless adventures and experiences. I now find myself living in Brazil and still feel I am a long way from completing my journey of discovery and find that I still have the same thirst for adventure, travel and new experiences as when I started.

My early adventures saw me hitch hiking around the west coast of Canada and the United States, working on a salmon fish boat in Alaska, and playing rugby in Canada and the United States. I have also tried to fill my life with various adventure and water sports including: diving, sky diving, bungy jumping, river rafting, 4 wheel driving, sailing, windsurfing, rock climbing, abseiling, canyoning, hiking, kayaking,
outrigger paddling to name a few.

More recently from my base in Brazil, I traveled across Brazil and South America with a view to discovering unique eco-friendly places to stay and travel experiences in amazing destinations.  These were curated in a eco-friendly travel business I created called Planet Natopia. The objective being to showcase an connect clients to the best of what Brazil and South America had to offer in the way of authentic and immersive ways to connect with nature and local cultures.

Whilst I no longer operate Planet Natopia I have an ongoing passion for adventure and travel and am committed to spending the rest of my life being a life experiencer.

“Life is to be lived and a life lived fully is filled with unique, extraordinary, natural and meaningful experiences.”

Damian Geleyns