About me

The Origins

Hello my little chicken nugget, my name is Bastien “Babi” Beresina and I was born in the best region of France : the Basque Country. All thoughout my education I’ve never been able to answer the question “What do you want to do when you grow up?”. Studying was definitely not for me so I decided to drop out and try to do something productive with my life for a change.

I then started volunteering for different organisations in the social field in France and in Denmark for almost two years and I absolutely loved it !!!

For the first time of my life I was feeling really useful, I was part of a team and I was just genuinely happy to go to work everyday and have fun with people.

First Job

Now as great as volunteering is it’s not really a sustainable career and I would eventually have to find a “real job” at one point.

I looked for jobs in France but having no diplomas and no professionnal experience the job market there just didn’t want anything to have to do with me. I had to sit down and think “Do I even have any skill? What is a competence that I could leverage from?” and one of the rare things I could think about was that I could now speak 2 languages, french and english because of my volunteering abroad.

I tried to figure out what kind of place could be interested in someone who speaks 2 languages, has had experience living abroad and is good working with people? The tourism industry was the answer.

I looked for jobs on the internet outside of france and I pretty quickly found a job in Croatia for a hotel who was looking for entertainers that could speak english and french !

The Call Of The Wild

Alright I did the hardest part, I’ve got my foot in the door of the tourism industry and I should capitalize on it. Somehow I’ve always been interested in Scandinavia, the landscapes, the winters, the northern lights…

After a few searches I stumbled across a job offer looking for dog mushers in northern Norway. Holy macaroni, dog mushing in the arctic sounds like a pretty good gig. I sent my CV, my best motivation letter and they came back to me rapidly asking “When can you come?”.

I was ecstatic, I will be living in the arctic for 8 months driving huskies for a living. Surely enough, 8 months became 3 and a half years and I started building myself a nice looking CV.

In between winters I used the money I was saving to invest in useful skills or experiences, passing a trailer licence here, a minibus licence there, volunteering on boats to clean the norwegian coasts from plastic pollution, doing a 5 months course for kayak instructors in the Alps…

Anything that could help me find more jobs in the future or just life experiences that attracted me.

Specializing In Adventures

Then of course this cheeky covid hit and stopped all possibilities to work in tourism for a little while. I decided to go home for a few months and look for a job that I could still do outdoors and I was hired by beekeepers to help them for a full season close to the Pyrenees !

It’s now the end of 2021 and the borders are reopening nicely, people start traveling again, adventure is calling. I get offered a job by two former colleagues who are now working with Icelandic horses in the Lofoten islands, let’s freaking go.

Finding jobs is becoming easier and easier. Besides this last job that came from personal relations, I find that the more experiences I live, the more I learn to target the right companies to apply to. It’s also just a snowball effect, the more jobs you get, the more skills you accumulate, the more appealing your profile becomes to employers.

Enough with the arctic, I’ve had enough polar nights and frostbites, I’m off to Switzerland. I’m gonna work as ground crew for a hot air balloon company. Job that I could get thanks to my trailer license, the envelops and the baskets of the balloons needing to be transported on massive trailers and I happened to be able to do that !

The following winter I find a dog musher in the Swiss mountains who hires me for a few months. I’m thrilled about reconnecting with my dog sledding roots, almost 3 years later.

We’re in the beginning of 2023, I decide to go travel South America to learn spanish and add a new skill on my funky looking CV. I volunteer in hostels for 7 months in different countries and my spanish is getting pretty alright.

I’m thinking I should get back to work and Australia doesn’t seem so far away to me, maybe I should have a look there ?

After struggling a little bit more than usual to find an aussie outdoor job (australians are obsessed with qualifications), I find my current job as a quad bike guide on the remote but beautiful Kangaroo Island.

I already have my next job waiting for me in New Zealand, that was much easier to find. I’m gonna be a glacier guide from october of this year 2024, 8 years after my first job in Croatia.

I don’t know what will come my way in the future but I don’t worry too much about it. I’m pretty sure that if you stay true to yourself, follow your moral compass and try to live a fulfilling life, things will eventually fall into place for you.

With this blog my goal would be to humbly inspire people to take action and to explore the world. I’ve been selfish enough my whole life and always did everything for my own happiness, my own well being and I feel like it’s time for me to try to give back and help others.