Shot At, Stabbed, Threatened By Pirates, Bitten By Snake: Craziest Kiwi You've Never Heard Of - Pete Bethune 2

Pete Bethune is a New Zealand conservationist now based largely in Costa Rica, where he lives aboard his ship and works tackling illegal fishing, poaching and environmental crime.

We spoke for two and a half hours on his first podcast appearance and somehow barely scratched the surface (actually, if you missed that when it came out it is well worth going back and checking it out). And in Part Two, the stories somehow get even crazier.

Pete tells me about being bitten by one of the most dangerous snakes in Central America, then crawling for hours through the jungle while genuinely believing he might die. At the hospital, things got so bad that one of the doctors basically said goodbye to him.

We talk about being stabbed in Brazil, coming face-to-face with armed pirates, corruption, illegal gold mining, wildlife trafficking and why, at 61, Pete still has absolutely no interest in slowing down.

But underneath all the unbelievable adventure, I think there’s an interesting conversation here about how to live.

Pete owns virtually nothing. He doesn’t earn a salary. And yet he genuinely believes he’s one of the luckiest people alive.

At one point he asks a question that really stuck with me: Is the world a better place because you were in it?

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Massive thanks to my long‑term podcast sponsor, Generate.

Like a lot of Kiwis, I spent years saying, “I’ll look at my KiwiSaver account later.”

Turns out later comes around faster than you think, and the decisions you make now could be the difference between counting every dollar in retirement or having the freedom to take that trip you've always talked about.

I switched my KiwiSaver account to Generate after they came on board, and honestly, I should’ve done it sooner.