A snapshot

Born and bred in the beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa, Janine has a career that spans a variety of industries, including Hospitality, PR and Travel, and Adventure Tourism. Her attention to detail and ability to multi-task make her a great addition to the Ops team at YZ.

Janine's biography

Janine caught the travel bug after her first overseas experience, which was literally crossing the ocean on a yacht delivery to the Seychelles when she was 21. Desperate to discover what more the world had to offer, Janine embarked on travels to the Caribbean, where she chartered yachts as a chef for three years. Over the next decade she travelled around most of the USA, visited Thailand on her honeymoon, opened and ran a successful restaurant, and received a degree in Marketing and Business Management. She donned the Public Relations hat for a few years and then made the decision to emigrate. She worked in Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos Islands for an adventure tourism company as Cruise Relations Manager before finally settling in the UK with her husband and two children.

Despite all the beauty she is fortunate to have experienced around the world, Janine’s heart will forever be in Africa and nothing will ever compare with the magnificence of a true African safari, especially at sunset! This, for her, is still the ultimate way to spend a vacation and she is blessed to have enjoyed a fair number of game drives from some beautiful lodges and reserves in her life so far. Having seen four out of the Big Five, she is still looking forward to that elusive first leopard sighting one day!

Most memorable experience

My most memorable safari experience has got to be the day we happened upon an entire family of wild dog in Kruger National Park. The mum was simply lying there on the side of the path with her pups and dad was just behind, keeping a close watch on all of us in the truck. It was incredible to be able to see them so close up in their natural environment.

My most memorable travel experience was while working in the British Virgin Islands in 2005. We had anchored in a quiet bay. Our charter guests had left the boat for the afternoon to do some exploring and I decided to take a dip in the ocean. It wasn’t long before I noticed that I wasn’t alone and that a dolphin and her calf were swimming just to the left of me. We swam around the boat together for about half an hour, carefully checking each other out. It was just incredible!