South Africa’s top Safari guide named – and he works in the KNP

NUMBI – South Africa has a new top Safari Guide.

Field guide Jaco Buys, who works at the Crocodile Bridge in the Kruger National Park (KNP) and hails from Hectorspruit, was crowned the Field Guide Association of South Africa’s (FGASA) best Safari guide for 2016 on Sunday.

• Read more about Jaco Buys here.

This came at the end of a week-long competition wherein six contestants countrywide participated at Nkambeni Safari Camp.

Organised by tour and travel operators Africa Direct, the aim of the awards is to celebrate the guides’ essential contribution to wildlife tourism.

Buys, Noelle van Muiden, Massimo Rebuzzi, Jono Harper, Pierre Mouton and Luke Sutherland were measured mainly on their ability to deal with people.

However, before they even arrived to compete, they were all winners having been shortlisted after a very thorough selection process. Guides working all over the country were nominated and only these six were shortlisted.

“They are the interfaces between wildlife and the public,” explained judge Quinton Coetzee.

“Take an elderly couple who have saved up for years to come on safari once. Sometimes their guide is the only South African they would meet. You are therefore an ambassador for the industry and whole country.

They have imagined their experience long before they got here, and the guide is the person who will make or break their experience. ‘Those memories are forever’.”

During the competition the judging panel, consisting of Coetzee, Juan Pinto, Mike Karantonis, Tanya Kotze, Brian Serrao, Grant Hine and James Steyn acted as tourists that the contestants had to guide. They gave up their time, despite their own busy professional lives, to measure the creme de la creme of the committed field guide contestants.

Buys won the guided walk, game drive and story telling categories. Van Muiden was named the overall runner-up. Rebuzzi won the shooting and tracking categories and Harper came out tops in birding.

Buys said being a field guide was not a job, but a fantastic lifestyle. He was humbled by the award and prizes, but added the experience and great friendships that came with the lifestyle was really reward enough for him.

He added that tracking was his favourite part, although he didn’t win that category in the competition. “The standards we high. I was shocking in the birding category,” he laughed. “You are never going to know everything, but this inspires you to improve your skills.”

• Read about the winner of 2015:

Country’s best field guide honoured in the KNP