If Brando Yelavich wasn't currently hiking along Northland's east coast, he suspects he could very well be on some couch somewhere doing drugs.
The 20-year-old Aucklander was walking the coastline from Sandy Bay to Helena Bay yesterday as part of a 16-month solo walking circumnavigation of New Zealand - the impetus for which was escaping a life of drink and drugs.
"I found the wrong road in life and I was getting in trouble with the police, so I decided to change my life. I was getting into drugs - I didn't like who I had turned into and wanted to clear my head," he told the Northern Advocate.
Mr Yelavich set out in February last year from Cape Reinga on an anticlockwise circumnavigation of the country, hunting and gathering his own food in between offers of meals and accommodation from strangers, and raising money for the Ronald McDonald house.
"If I didn't do this trip, I'd be probably sitting on a couch, on the dole, doing drugs with my friends.