How we choose our guides
· 1 min read
Every trip is only as good as the person leading it. Here is what we look for, and what we turn down.
A trip is a landscape, a vehicle and a person. Two of those we can specify on paper. The third is why we meet every guide before they take a group out, and why we turn down more of them than we take on.
What we look for
- Local, and still living there. Someone who drives the same road in the wet season and the dry one knows which version you are getting.
- Willing to say "I don't know". A guide who invents an answer about a bird will invent one about a road closure too.
- Comfortable with a slow morning. The best sightings come to people who wait. Guides who keep moving are filling silence, not finding animals.
What we pay for
Every guide we work with is on a day rate that does not depend on you buying anything, visiting a particular shop, or tipping. Where a trip includes a village or a market, the community is paid directly before you arrive.
The rate is the same whether a group is two people or twelve. It is the single largest line in what a trip costs, and the one we will not compete on.
Where they come from
Most of the people leading our trips came to us through other guides. A few came through the national associations — in Kenya the Kenya Wildlife Service sets the standard most operators recruit against, and it is a fair floor rather than a ceiling.
If you have travelled with someone you rate, tell us. We would rather hire on a recommendation than an application.
Every trip in the full list of tours names its guide before you book.
