KEY POINTS:
Tom Petty's Free Falling accompanies Karen Aim's descent on a tandem skydive, a soundtrack to override her screams of panic or delight.
She claps, wide-eyed on landing, charging to practically kiss the lens of the camera which documented her adrenalin high.
It's an image replayed on the web pages of thousands of young tourists to New Zealand, internet updates that detail the risks taken, the new friends met and those typically fuzzy nights out.
Karen Aim's Bebo page is indicative of a backpacker's whole-hearted enjoyment of New Zealand, though now on the right hand side messages - often envious of the traveller's lifestyle - have been replaced by sorrow and despair.
Tributes for the 26-year-old Scottish woman from the Orkney Islands have been steadily added to her home page since news of her brutal murder in Taupo yesterday spread to her homeland.
Close friends, old acquaintances and travellers she didn't even now have all added their condolences as police from through out the North Island converge on the tourist hot spot to track the people responsible for leaving her on a street corner dying of massive injuries.
Ms Aim, living for a second time in the New Zealand town she embraced above all others, was pronounced dead at Taupo Hospital yesterday, shortly after she was found about 2.10am.
A homicide inquiry had pulled in resources from Tauranga, Rotorua, Napier, Poverty Bay and the Waikato.
A specialist search team from Auckland are combing a cordoned off area in and around Taupo Nui-A-Tia College - another from Wellington is due to arrive today.
Investigators will tonight canvas the bars of Taupo, a backpackers' melting pot, and one which the adventurous and sociable Scottish lass felt right at ease.
Unashamedly describing herself as happiest "When with my girlfriends on a good drinking sesh, either oot in Kirkwall or in Glasgow or Aberdeen", Ms Aim immersed herself in the lakeside resort town's nightlife.
She first arrived in October 2006 on a three-month visitor's permit and, taken by the beauty of the countryside, Ms Aim plotted a hasty return once her time expired in January last year. The paperwork was eventually in place and she touched down back in on Auckland on October 28.
Her first entry reads: "Hey dudes, just wee note to say that's me back in bonny Auckland again, landed just an hour ago...grand flights over, bought really cool wee digital camera...still buzzing fi (from) the adrenaline tho I think cos only had about 3 hours kip in last 2 days."
After "checking out" Auckland for a day she headed to Taupo to meet a couple of mates from her first trip before moving on again to visit her Aunty Violet in Palmerston North. The pair went south, an unchartered journey for both.
November 18: "Now in Dunedin, the city that's meant to be the Edinburgh of NZ...we've spent the last 2 weeks touring the South Island in me '94 Toyota Corolla...luvin it being able to go when and where ever you fancy..."
After taking in the South Island's West Coast, Abel Tasman's "beautiful sandy beaches and bays", Franz Josef, Wanaka, Queenstown and the "mind blowing" Milford Sound, they turned tail at Invercargill and headed back north.
Back in Taupo, Ms Aim first found work in a glass blowing gallery "right up me street" and then worked at Wairakei, on the outskirts of town.
"Meeting lots o cool as folk over here too, living wi a Kiwi and an Irish lass, right good laughs..." she enthuses on her page's introduction.
Her last entry 16 days a go was a short, three line entry hoping everyone had a "ace Christmas and very pissed New Year".
The latest entry was from Shona McCann: "Karen why u? I am glad that I got the chance to have known u and remember all the laughs we had at the hotel.
"Everyday when I arrived at work I saw ur big smile and got a `Hi bud what like the day'. Will miss u lots. Sweet dreams bud u will always be in my thoughts.xxx"
- NZPA