We are writing to say thank you for all you did for us on our recent Birds and Wine tour with you and Alvaro. We really enjoyed meeting you and spending two weeks touring with you around South Africa. The itinerary that you put together with Alvaro was great and all the arrangements worked out to give us a wonderful tour. Your knowledge of the birds and patience spent helping us find and see all the birds really helped us to enjoy our experience and increase our knowledge. We spent much of our time in the Manyoni Reserve in the vehicle with you and it was always exciting finding the wildlife and hearing your analysis of the situation. We also truly appreciated your selection of wineries to visit, the wines we tasted, and the wines you selected to take with us to Zebra Hills Lodge. Your knowledge of the wine and wineries greatly added to our pleasure on the tour. We live in the Northern California wine region and the opportunity to compare South Africa’s wine with the product we know was very enlightening for us. Both the wineries we visited and the wines we tasted convinced us that we were in an excellent wine producing region of the world.

Greg was a fantastic guide, and I hope that I can take another tour/bird with him again in the future. I greatly enjoyed birding and spending time with him, he was very personable and I'm glad that we were able to become friends. Greg knew where to search for the birds and was extremely knowledgeable about birds and other wildlife and natural history. I also greatly appreciated how Greg dealt with issues that arose with other guests, and how quickly he tried to step in and prevent problems from escalating further. Guiding can be a difficult job, and Greg did a terrific job.

André, who escorted us on four drives, is a superb tracker with great knowledge of the reserve and its denizens. He is also an expert on the birdlife of southern Africa and was able to bring the bush to life for us with knowledge of all that we saw.

Doug (Douglas McCulloch) is a gentleman and a scholar, and my husband and I very much appreciated his guiding. His knowledge of the birds, other animals, and plants encountered on the trip is tremendous. His ability to get us “onto the bird” was much appreciated – I can still hear him say, “just above the dot.” His communication skills are excellent, and his patience with each of us was un-ending. In addition, his knowledge of the natural history of the area was extensive and very helpful. He was also able to provide some information about the social, political and economic climate of Southern Africa without opinion or agenda. He made an effort to get to know each member of the tour and to be responsive to their particular interests with regard to the tour. His energy was unending – even including an evening walk to look for honey badgers when we had already had a long day and an excellent evening meal. Obviously, I cannot say enough good about him. We would definitely welcome an opportunity to tour with him in the future, should our economic situation provide for another Rockjumper adventure in Africa.

I would like to add my thanks to you, Crystal, and all the other people associated with Rockjumper for making this the best birding tour in which I have participated. David's leadership was superb as our trip bird count shows. I would be happy to go with Rockjumper on future trips. Thanks again for your assistance during the Mega South Africa trip.