Our guides

The people you'll travel with.

A safari is mostly a person. The person who reads the light before dawn, who knows which track the leopard uses, who turns a day out into a story. Ours are, without exaggeration, among the finest in East Africa — and most of them have been with us for fifteen, twenty, in a couple of cases twenty-five years.

Nigel Archer

Founder · Lead guide

Fourth-generation Kenyan — with his young children now the fifth — who grew up on safari with his parents. His father Tony Archer took out his first mobile safari in 1957, and Nigel has been guiding professionally in East Africa since the early 1990s.

After a BSc at the University of Adelaide he returned home to the bush. Today he designs every itinerary that leaves our office, leads a handful of personal safaris a year, and still replies to most first enquiries himself.

Lolo

Head Guide

Nigel's right hand since the early days. Lolo is our Head Guide — a tracker, naturalist, and the senior guide returning guests most often ask for by name. He reads tracks the way the rest of us read a newspaper.

He has worked with Nigel for more than two decades, leads a handful of personal safaris each season, and sets the standard every other guide on the team is held to.

Chris

Senior guide

Born and raised in America, Chris used a background in hospitality to fuel a lifelong passion for adventure travel. In 2007 he fulfilled a childhood dream and moved to East Africa, learning from — and working with — some of the great innovators in African conservation and tourism.

Nearly two decades on, he has built lodges, led safaris across the continent, worked on conservation projects, and spent long spells in the hidden corners of the map. Guests who travel with Chris remark on how gently he teaches and how completely he listens.

Andy

Senior guide · Walking specialist

Andy's passion for wildlife began on a farm in County Wicklow, Ireland, and led him to a degree in Marine Biology and Oceanography. A student trip to Kenya changed the plan. He trained in South Africa — Level 2 guide, trail guide, remote medic, advanced rifle — and in 2004 began guiding full-time in the Maasai Mara.

Two decades later, Andy is one of the most quietly skilled walking-safari guides working in Kenya. We pair him with guests who most want to travel on foot.

Sean

Senior guide

Kenyan-born Sean grew up on the Kenyan coast, working alongside his father's game-fishing company in Watamu with Tsavo National Park close at hand. The "beach & bush" childhood became a career. Educated in Kenya and South Africa, Sean holds a Yacht Master's qualification and has fished professionally in Cape Verde, Kenya and the Seychelles.

After training as a safari guide with EcoTraining, he settled into the Maasai Mara. His ease on both land and sea — and his gift with first-time safari-goers — makes him one of our most requested guides.

Mark

Gold-level guest guide · author & pilot

With more than 30 years of guiding in East Africa, Mark is one of the most accomplished safari guides on the continent. A Gold Level guide and a trainer of guides, he holds degrees in wildlife biology and zoology, is fluent in Kiswahili, and has flown commercially for 36 years.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic and Time, and he is the author of two critically acclaimed books on African wildlife. Mark travels with us on select itineraries as a guest guide.

Pierre

Senior guide

A third-generation Kenyan, Pierre grew up living under canvas in the bush with his father — the renowned conservationist Miles Burton. After a diploma in Tourism Management in Switzerland he returned to East Africa and into tourism and conservation full-time.

Pierre's specialism is northern Kenya — Samburu, the Mathews, Laikipia. Whether on safari with guests or with friends, he is most at home in the bush.

Teeku

Photographic safari guide

One of Kenya's home-grown photographic talents. Teeku spent his early years on safari with his father, an Honorary Game Warden, and was given his first camera at ten. That began a career: his work appears regularly in wildlife and nature magazines, and his photographs sit in libraries and archives around the world.

A certified professional safari guide, he leads our dedicated photographic trips through East and Southern Africa. He co-owns Sokomoto Images, based in Nairobi.

Louis

Walking & horseback specialist

Louis grew up immersed in the Maasai Mara, and speaks Maa alongside English, French and Swahili. After studying hospitality in The Hague and managing a luxury lodge in the Mara, he trained as a professional nature and walking guide in Botswana.

Today he leads our horseback and walking safaris — the kind of trip you only want to do once in your life, with the right person holding the reins.

Tell us who you're travelling with — we'll pair you with the right guide.

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