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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, have actually been to the places where you are thinking of travelling and can advise you from first-hand experience – like our team! To reduce spam, we haven't written email addresses below, but all follow the form: first-name dot second-name @ expertafrica dot com( Please copy all always to info @ expertafrica dot com )
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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 Guide to Namibia and Botswana for Bradt Publications; this was the first English guidebook to these countries. On returning to the UK, he spent three years as a business analyst for a blue-chip company in London.
Leaving the city, Chris joined Sunvil Holidays in 1994 to concentrate on what he enjoys most: Africa. Within four years, Sunvil's embryonic Africa programme became a separate company, for forerunner of Expert Africa - which remains a proud member of the Sunvil family of travel companies.
Chris feels very lucky to be doing what he loves, and to have an amazing team of specialists working with him. He is committed to responsible travel, and regards extensive travel for everyone on the team as an essential part of this work – helping everyone to keep up to date and give the best advise possible.
In 1996 Chris wrote the Zambia guidebook, for Bradt Publications; then the first guidebook to Zambia. The fourth edition of this guide was published in Jan 2009. He followed it in '98 with a new Namibia guide and in 2003 with a new book on Botswana; both are now in their 3rd editions. Most recently he and his wife, Susan, have co-authored a new Zanzibar guide. Chris researches to ensure that these stay 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 the UK near Richmond, he spends several months each year travelling and researching in Africa.
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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 in 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. In this way she hitched to Namibia, a name and country completely new to her. She loved it immediately 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, Zambia and Tanzania. In 2009, Maruska returned to New Zealand to live and set up a satellite office for Expert Africa in Hastings. She remains an integral part of the team and continues to arrange holidays for our travellers, just from a desk half-way around the world!
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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 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 areas of London and the West End, she accepted an offer to work in Zambia, running safari camps first in Kafue National Park, then moving to the 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. Anna specialises in Zambia, Botswana and Malawi and visits Africa regularly on both holidays and research trips. In addition to her busy job, Anna is studying for an English Literature degree with the Open University, and writes regularly for a variety of travel magazines.
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 After moving to London with her husband in 2005, Lucy (née Scholte) started working for Expert Africa. Lucy grew up in Cape Town, and spent many years exploring South Africa.
After school, Lucy studied a year's Diploma course in Travel & Tourism. Before commencing her tourism career, Lucy au-paired in America for two months; then settled down in Cape Town and started working for one of South Africa's most reputable tour operators. After eight years in the tourism industry, Lucy decided to relocate to London where she started working for Expert Africa.
Lucy now focuses on tailor-making holidays 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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 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 in Botswana – as her first experience of wild Africa, it still remains 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 Island in Tanzania, primarily scuba diving with a marine conservation project. After this, 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. In the last three years she has visited all of the areas in Tanzania that we feature. More recently she has also researched northern Mozambique and so adds this to her expert knowledge.
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 Angela's first taste of Africa was in 2003 when she spent the summer volunteering at a whale and dolphin research centre in Plettenberg Bay, South Africa, tracking the movements of bottlenose dolphins and humpback whales around the coast. While there, she used her weekends to travel along the Garden Route, visit Cape Town and even help out in the conservation of the endangered Knysna seahorse.
After completing a four year degree in Natural Sciences at The University of Birmingham, which included a year studying animal biology at the Université Paul Sabatier III in Toulouse, France, Angela decided to hit the road again. This time she spent three months backpacking around Australia followed by four months travelling overland from Nairobi to Johannesburg via Cape Town. During this trip she went micro-lighting over Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, hiked through the forest to see the mountain gorillas in Uganda and taught English to very hardworking schoolchildren in Kenya.
On her return to the UK, Angela trained as a TEFL teacher and taught for fifteen months at an international college near Worcester. While working she saved up as much as she could so that in 2008 she could go backpacking again, this time taking the train across Siberia to Southeast Asia, where she spent nine months travelling before exploring Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.
Angela's love of travel inspired her to apply for a position with Expert Africa and she joined the team in September 2009 as a trainee Namibia specialist.
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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. This encouraged her appreciation for nature and the outdoors.
She returned to Windhoek for secondary school, and particularly enjoyed Geography as a subject 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 returned to Namibia a number of times to research the camps as well as for occasional holidays.
In 2006 Sabina travelled to the Caprivi Strip to learn more about that area and to research the new developments there. In 2007 she spend a bit of time travelling around the southern parts of Namibia (visiting a number of camps around the Namib Naukluft National Park; The Fish River Canyon; Luderitz / Klein Aus) and in June 2009 Sabina went on a visit to Waterberg Camp, Damaraland Camp, Etosha and Okonjima.
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 Working as secondary school teacher from 1988 to 2002/3, Tracy always utilised 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 eight months. Her enthusiasm for scuba diving also developed during this time and Tracy has now dived in Australia, S/E Asia, the Red Sea, Central America, the Caribbean and Madagascar, as well as various African destinations.
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 numerous 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 travellers with disabilities, she finally joined Expert Africa in 2004. She now specialises in tailor-making trips to Namibia, Rwanda, Mozambique and South Africa, and has spent many weeks researching in these countries. Tracy is also a major contributor to Bradt's Namibia guidebook.
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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 and Malawi. She currently focuses on Tanzania and in 2008 she travelled, with her colleague Ellie, to the remote Lake Eyasi and Natron areas in Northern Tanzania to research these off beat areas for us. She continues to travel to Africa regularly, exploring new places – and checking up on old ones!
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 Liz's passion for Africa grew during her gap-year trip before her degree. Armed with just a back-pack, she first spent two months in the foothills of Kilimanjaro working at a local school (during which time she oversaw the construction of a library), and then decided to travel around East Africa. On an overland truck, she travelled through Tanzania, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa and then flew to Zambia for a final week. Whilst in Zambia she bungee-jumped over the Victoria Falls!
While studying economics at university Liz took advantage of her long holidays to continue to travel across the world, exploring countries such as Thailand, Spain and various other countries in Europe. After she graduated she moved to France where she spent six months working in the Alps, before jetting off again to spend two months doing marine conservation scuba diving in the Seychelles.
Liz returned to London in June 2009 to work for Expert Africa where she is training as a Tanzania specialist. She enjoys returning to Africa on work trips, researching old places and discovering new ones!
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