Extreme water sports

In our experience, hitting the ocean in a kayak is an adventure hard to top, so we'll leave it to the experts to think up a way. 'We could spice it up a bit with fishing from the kayak,' suggests Venture owner and founder Aaron Davis. Or how about, 'night kayaking with a seafood barbecue…and, if people have time, adding some river sledging or rafting at the base of Mt. Fuji'?

Obviously, we've come to the right man. Aaron's company, previously known as Bashukway Travel, specialises in outdoor adventure. He's been running the operation for 10 years, with five years' experience as a group leader on top of that. 'We design our expeditions around what our group leaders, including myself, love to do. For most of us, the Izu peninsula offers an amazing amount of water-based fun, great for coasteering, ocean swimming, sea kayaking and windsurfing, all of which we offer.' Is there anything watery that the company doesn't offer? 'Well, grade five rapids are hard to get insurance for as an operator…though we have, at least without clients, found places in the Nagano and Gunma areas to knock ourselves out!'

Knocking himself out seems like a regular requirement for Aaron. As a Venture group leader, a typical week will find him 'swimming 10-12 kilometres myself in a local river, lake or ocean. I'll also do several kayaking trips with clients, and spend a day with a group of co-workers on a team building course that will mostly consist of water-based challenges and activities to test their leadership.' The week that we caught up with him, he was also designing a race in Australia that will incorporate swimming, coasteering and kayaking.

Quite the action man, then. Are there any activities that he finds difficult himself? Apparently not. 'I have always had too much fun to think of activities like this as "too hard",' he tells us. "Ocean swimming in freezing water, like crossing from the North to South Island in New Zealand, is of course hard, but the mind and body are enjoying the challenge too much. It is the difficulty of it that creates the challenge.'

If you're up for 'the challenge', click through to ventureaa.com for prices, schedules and further info

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