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Meet the team
We believe that to get the best from a trip to Africa, you need impartial advice from people who know Africa well, and have actually been to the places where you are thinking of travelling. That way they can advise you from first-hand experience.
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 Maruska's affinity with Africa began when her parents took her with them to live in Tanzania before she was one year of age. Her family lived most of the time in Dar es Salaam where Maruska's first spoken words were Swahili. She also lived two of the following nine years in the Selous Game Reserve while her parents managed a lodge there.
In 1986 her family returned to their home in New Zealand to settle, but by then the need to explore and travel was embedded in Maruska's psyche. She left home at the age of 16 to live in England where she studied her A-levels before taking a job in graphic design. After a year in the job industry she gave in to the call of Africa and bought a year's flight ticket with the idea of backpacking from South Africa to Tanzania.
Easily distracted by the places she visited and the people she met along the way, Maruska's well laid travel plans soon began to unravel. She finally gave in and took a lift offered from Zimbabwe to Namibia having not even been aware that Namibia was on the African continent. It was here that she really fell in love with Africa and decided to stay. She worked in bars, designed flyers, managed backpacker hostels and camps – anything to prolong her time in Africa – before taking a job as a travel consultant.
Seven years later Maruska decided to return to the UK where she joined the Expert Africa team. She maintains her close connection with Namibia whilst building on her knowledge of other southern African countries such as Botswana.
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 A family safari to Zambia in 1991 kick-started Anna's love for Africa - a year later, aged 17, she bought a plane ticket to Zimbabwe and spent four months exploring Zimbabwe and Zambia, travelling on her own and joining voluntary and teaching projects wherever she could. During her time there she also adopted an orphaned hippo, completed a ranger's marksmanship course and presented a programme for Zimbabwe's cable TV about the drought in the Lowveld areas.
After a varied career in the West End and the City, she accepted an offer to work in Zambia, running camps first in Kafue National Park, then moving to Luangwa Valley where she could train as a guide. Anna spent two years in the valley, managing a remote bushcamp in the middle of the park, and becoming involved with occasional game management projects – in addition to looking after the many guests who visited her camp.
Travel was never far from Anna's life and in 2003 she moved to India, where she helped to set up and run a jungle lodge in the middle of tiger country – during this time she worked closely with the park elephants, becoming a trainee mahout, and also founded a first aid training centre for the park guards.
She returned to the UK to work for Expert Africa, which combines both her industry knowledge and her love of Africa
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 Sabina was born in Windhoek, Namibia of Ovambo descent, and most of her family still live there. She went to primary school in Oranjemund – a 'closed town' in the Namib Desert's restricted Diamond area – the Sperrgebeit – and remembers many weekends spent camping at Sheppard's Neck, in the wilderness there, as a girl guide.
She returned to Windhoek for secondary school, and particularly enjoying Geography as a subject. This encouraged her appreciation for nature and the outdoors, and eventually led to her heading to Cape Town for two years in 1995 to study a Travel and Tourism course.
Two years later, in 1997, she started her career in tourism by joining Namib Travel Shop, a Windhoek-based travel company - which later became Wilderness Safaris Namibia. In the last ten years she has travelled extensively all over Namibia, acquiring a wealth of knowledge and experience on the country.
Having worked with the Expert Africa team for many years, she moved to UK to join us in October 2005 – and since then she's so far returned to Namibia for occasional holidays and to research the new developments in the Caprivi Strip.
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 Working as secondary school teacher from 1988 to 2002/3, Tracy always utilized her extended summer holidays to travel the world. She would buy a flight somewhere and then spend the 6/7 weeks independently exploring the country visited in great detail. She also took two periods of unpaid leave to embark on longer periods of travel to satisfy her wanderlust, the first for five months and the second for 8 months.
Her love of Africa began with a trip backpacking and hitch hiking around Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. Since then Tracy has travelled extensively in Southern and East Africa on several occasions. Her passion for travel finally pushed her to make a career move from education into the travel industry.
After working for a company tailor-making holidays for people with disabilities, she finally joined Expert Africa in 2004. She now specializes in Namibia and Rwanda, and has spent 9 weeks in Namibia and 2 weeks in Rwanda researching there to date.
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 Chris first went to Africa in 1987, where he taught with VSO in Zimbabwe for almost three years and travelled around extensively. In 1990 he co-authored the UK's first Guide to Namibia and Botswana for Bradt Publications, before spending three years as a business analyst in London.
In 1994 Chris joined the team at Sunvil Travel, to concentrate on what he enjoys most: Africa. He is now managing director of Expert Africa – and feels privileged to have such an excellent team of specialists working with him. He regards travel and research as an essential part of this work, for him and his whole team.
In 1996 Chris wrote the first edition of the Bradt Travel Guide to Zambia, which was then the first guidebook to Zambia. He followed it in '98 with a new Namibia guide, and in 2003 with a new Botswana guidebook. Most recently he's co-authored the new Bradt Travel Guide to Zanzibar. He keeps them all up to date, and writes new editions regularly.
Chris is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and periodically contributes to various papers and magazines, including Wanderlust, BBC Wildlife and Travel Africa. Based in London, he spends two or three months each year travelling and researching in Africa.
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 Born and bred in Cape Town, Lucy (née Scholte) is an expert on the Cape and the Garden Route. Many holidays were spent exploring South Africa before moving to London in 2005.
After school, Lucy studied a years Diploma course in Travel & Tourism. Before commencing her tourism career, Lucy au-paired in America for 2 months, then settled down in Cape Town and started working for one of South Africa's most reputable tour operators. After 8 years in the tourism industry, Lucy decided to relocate to London where she started working for Expert Africa.
Lucy now focuses on tailor-making trips to Botswana and Zambia, which she's explored steadily and thoroughly over the last few years, and continues to share her passion for Africa with anyone who wants to travel there.
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 Claire grew up in and travelled extensively within South Africa. She started in the travel industry in the mid 80's after spending a year travelling and working in Europe.
She came to the UK with her husband in 1990 and worked for various tour operators over a 10-year period selling South Africa as well as Zimbabwe. She started at Sunvil Africa, as it was then known, in 2001 – and has been with us ever since.
Claire covers all areas of the Expert Africa programme, having travelled and researched extensively throughout Namibia, the Cape, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi and Tanzania. She continues to travel to Africa regularly, researching new places – and checking up on old ones!
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 With a South African mother, Ellie's family holidays were often based around visiting relatives in Johannesburg and Durban. Then at 16 she went on a family trip to the Okavango Delta – as her first experience of wild Africa, it still remains to be one of her most memorable.
With an established passion for the continent, in 2002 Ellie decided to take a year out before university in order to travel East and Southern Africa. She began a four-month stint of volunteer work on Pemba in Tanzania, primarily scuba diving with a marine conservation project. After the project Ellie backpacked for five months, travelling from Dar es Salaam, down through Southern Africa to Cape Town and back, before returning home.
After completing a three year degree in History at Newcastle University, Ellie was drawn back to East Africa and flew out to Kenya to travel for a further eight months. During this time she volunteered at an orphanage in Kisumu in Kenya, and then proceeded to travel through Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda.
When she returned to England in August 2006 she joined the Expert Africa team to specialise in Tanzania.
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 Since visiting Africa for the first time around ten years ago, Susannah has been hooked. During a 6 month stay in 1997, she taught at a school in a township just outside Cape Town, and afterwards travelled up through South Africa and around Zimbabwe. She returned a few years later and spent several exciting months driving around Botswana and Namibia, camping along the way.
After hiking up through Zambia, Malawi, and Tanzania, and spending a few weeks diving in Zanzibar she reluctantly returned home to the UK. Susannah has also travelled widely throughout Europe, the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Having originally trained and practised as a lawyer, Susannah ultimately decided to leave the profession and focus on her passions - travel and Africa. She joined the Expert Africa team in October 2006 and specialises in safaris to Botswana. Since joining the team, she has spent 8 weeks in Botswana and the Livingstone area, visiting virtually all of the lodges and camps we feature, and is planning trips to neighbouring countries for 2008.
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 Gwynneth Bezuidenhout is Namibian: she was born in Namibia and grew up in Windhoek, which is where many of her family still live.
As a teenager, she spent holidays travelling with her family around South Africa's Garden Route, and loved sports at school – Gwynneth's a sprinter by nature!
After school, following a few short and uninteresting office jobs, she turned to travel – enrolling herself into college in South Africa for two years to study Hotel Management. Returning home to Windhoek, she swiftly got her first taste of the real travel industry, in 2000, when she started working for a mobile safari specialist, organising the logistics of small-group camping trips.
She stayed with the same mobile safari operator in Windhoek, working through many roles in the company, until the end of 2006. Then she took the adventurous leap of moving to the UK, to join us in the Expert Africa team.
Gwynneth returns to Namibia regularly, both to see her family, and to research new destinations for us. She concentrates on advising travellers on trips around Namibia, and especially the small-group camping trips offered by Wild about Africa, that she knows so well.
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 Ann's passion for Africa began working as a dive-master in the Egypt's Red Sea with many South Africans! Her love for Africa was so strong she struck a deal with her dad: she'd finish university and then explore.
At the end of 2000, after a four-year French and Spanish degree, she finally flew out to South Africa to live and work. Taking any jobs that came, including feeding the penguins at a local aquarium, this is where her passion for Africa took off.
Returning to London, Ann worked as cabin crew, then a TEFL teacher, though often returned to South Africa to stay with friends. Finally, she put herself through three freezing months in a Suffolk truck garage, taking vehicles apart and learning about them – to become a fully-fledged driver-leader-mechanic for an overland company.
Ann loved the next 14 months – driving a 24-seater Mercedes Benz truck throughout Eastern and Southern Africa, guiding groups of assorted travellers.
Family illness forced her return to London in February 2007 – where Expert Africa was lucky enough to find her! Now she travels back to Africa frequently, on both work trips and holidays, researching for Expert Africa – whilst spending her days helping travellers to plan superb trips to Tanzania!
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