We are so lucky that we had Joachim as our guide! During our time together there are so many things that we learned from him that made a huge difference in the quality of our journey to Tanzania. He was always kind and considerate about any need that we had and he emphasized that our safety was always first. As a driver, he is careful, courteous and very skilled with driving on difficult roads as smoothly as possible (plus driving through the insanity of crowded downtown Arusha roads). In addition, he knows all the park roads and how to get around in a maze of unsigned roads. As a driver, he knows how to position the vehicle for optimum photography. As a guide, he was extremely helpful suggesting places to see in Arusha, particularly the Heritage Center and Art Museum.

Even more exciting for us are the special skills Joachim has as a spotter for birds, and all the other mammals! We are thrilled that he spotted and identified over 77 different species of birds on our trip! Joachim would see the bird and show us where to look, Laurel followed with binoculars and described colors and other features while Duane was busy taking pictures! Joachim used several sources to identify birds – most from memory – with some more details from a great field guide “Birds of East Africa” and on-line as well. A really important thing that he did for us was to make a list of the birds that we saw in each National Park. We are working now at home with those lists and the photos that we took to properly identify all of the photos.

Of course, we also loved seeing all the animals as well, not just the big 5! You’re missing 80% of the creatures if you only look for those five – in fact we came up with the idea of the little 5 – the smallest birds that are beautiful and hard to photograph because they move around so fast like the lilac breasted roller and bee eater. The giraffe, elephants, zebra, wildebeest and all the beautiful antelope/gazelles were exciting to see. We did see the big 5 and that was VERY exciting, even though the rhino that we spotted was at a great distance. The grand finale was seeing the wildebeest cross the Mara River! Since 85% had already crossed, we were very lucky to see some crossing after 1 hr 30 min wait. Some tourists had waited 4 or 5 hours and gave up. Joachim was very patient and if it was not for his patience we would have given up too and missed the spectacle of the crossing.

Joachim brings to his job good English skills, intelligence, motivation, education, and excellent people skills.