About us

Wildlife Mad Travellers

We are Liz & Alan and we are wildlife mad travellers! We didn’t start out this way, our early travelling adventures were about visiting new countries, experiencing the culture, viewing the scenery and any wildlife that we happened to encounter. That changed in 2005 when we went on our first adventure that was dedicated to viewing wildlife, a safari in Kenya, the experience changed our approach to adventure planning and for nearly all our travel plan discussions our first thoughts are what animals might we see?

Where we can, we try to travel independently and we combine our passion for wildlife with another of our passions, road trips. You can’t beat the freedom of having your own transport and being able to stop when and where you want to. North America offers great independent wildlife viewing opportunities and you will find many USA and Canadian road trips featured in our trip reports.

Some wildlife experiences are more difficult to achieve independently, you really can’t underestimate the added value you get from using local guides. Not only does it increase the chances of finding rarer wildlife, but a guide should be able to educate you about the species you’re viewing and maybe know something about its past. We have done many wildlife adventures booking directly with remote lodges that offer guided wildlife viewing, the majority of our bear viewing experiences have been done this way.

Sometimes it is nice to just relax in the knowledge that someone else is taking care of the little details and dealing with the hassles of last minute changes/problems for you. There are many very good wildlife tour operators that will manage the whole process including flights from home, arranging local guides and booking accommodation & meals. Going on a group tour can help reduce costs and you can’t beat the great comradery you get from sharing the experience with likeminded people. You will find links within our trip reports to the tour operators we have used during our adventures and our reports will give you a good idea of how well they did in fulfilling their promises.

Our third passion is for football! We try to attend both the UEFA Euro’s and FIFA World Cup finals, ticket applications willing. We usually go to neutral games, watching England (Liz) & Scotland (Alan) (when they qualify) can be too stressful! We have travelled across Europe, Japan, South Korea and South Africa to see games. The pinnacle was going to the World Cup Final in Johannesburg.

When we are not travelling, we live in central England where we both have full time 'real' jobs, using our annual leave wisely, we usually manage to take three to four travel adventures a year. All our travelling is financed by our real jobs and… so we are clear on this one… we do not get anything for free in return for writing trip reports, blogs or reviews. You can completely trust that everything we say is the honest truth about our experiences… the good, the bad and the ugly! So when our luggage got wet on the boat ride to Spirit Bear Lodge we wrote about it and when our Jetwing Eco guide stopped to have his lunch 5 minutes ride from our accommodation we wrote about it. These not so great experiences are balanced with the wow moments, we don’t allow the small ‘mistakes’ to ruin our trips, but we don’t ignore or hide the fact they happened either, they get recorded along with all the good stuff!

Our Kenyan safari along with inspiring us to focus more on wildlife travel, helped us rethink how we were recording our adventures too. We were fortunate to have 'once in a life time' experiences on that trip, which included seeing a Cheetah with six tiny cubs and although we did get some photos and video of them, if we'd had better equipment we probably would have left with some amazing photos!! Our advice for fellow wildlife travellers is... if you are spending lots of your hard earned cash on your adventures you should invest in decent equipment to record it. You don't have to have the top of the range equipment with features you will never use, but you do need a camera with a decent lens. When you get back home and show your friends your photos you will no longer be saying "see that dot, it was a bear"... you will be able to show them the bear and the dew dripping off its nose!

We hope our trip reports, travel blogs and reviews inspire and motivate you to experience your own travels or dream holidays, and in turn help you plan the trip of a lifetime. Please do contact us via our contact page if you have any questions you would like to ask us.

Happy travels!

Liz and Alan

A bit about Liz...

Liz - Yellowstone National Park (2016)

I am a programme manager, skills which come in very useful when planning a new adventure. I have been travelling across the globe since I was in my teens, but I truly discovered I had the travel bug in my late twenties and firmly passed it on to Alan.

I have always been a keen wildlife enthusiast, watching BBC wildlife programmes from a young age with my Mum, never once thinking I would one day get the opportunity to travel the world to see those marvels before my own eyes. Since then I have shed many happy tears at being in the presence of such amazing creatures!

I don't have an official bucket/wish list, as my wants often change depending on what we have just done and people we have met on our travels (fellow wildlife travellers have a lot to answer for in changing my list so regularly!) I would very much like to see as many of the bear species and cat species as possible - I appreciate many are rare and some experiences will have to wait until we have more time available.

However, it's not just the big and furry predators I'm interested in, I get as much a thrill out of seeing little critters, bugs, slugs, rodents, reptiles... you will see many pictures of the cute and not so cute 'little' animals we have encountered on our travels too.

Although I have a fear of water (I'm not a strong swimmer), I also have a passion for sea mammals – pinnipeds (seals), whales and dolphins. I will never have the courage to get into the water to see them, viewing them from a boat is as close as I want to be!

A bit about Alan...

Alan - Waterton Lakes (2006)

After finishing University I travelled with my mates in Europe, but it wasn't until I met Liz that my travelling horizons really broadened, when we made the life choice to make travelling the focus of our vacation time.

I enjoy the planning of my adventures almost as much as going on the trips themselves. Once a trip idea seed has been planted, either by Liz or something I have read, I am googling, reading up and planning. That's why we often have two or three trips planned and booked before we get back from the next one!

I am a bit of a road warrior at heart and, if Liz would allow it, I would spend twelve hours plus driving long distances on mega road trips. Fortunately, Liz has tempered my long driving days by sharing the driving and hinting at extra nights to break up the drives.

I have a passion for football with it featuring in many of our travelling adventures over the years. If we are in a country where we can catch a game or other sports fixture we will.

My other passions (other than Liz) are good beer, mountains and wildlife... if I can get all three (plus a road trip) in an adventure then I'm in heaven!

Comments or Questions?

If you have any questions or just want to say hi, please visit our contact page... please remember we are not a travel agent, we can only give you information on things that we have done :)

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