Zarek Cockar
Zarek was born and raised in Nairobi, back when the city was still quiet and unhurried. He remembers the smell of red dust hanging in the dry-season air, and the way it would cake his shoes with staining red mud when the rains came. Even growing up in a city, he was never far from trees, birdsong, and the small wildlife that moved through the spaces around his home - a childhood lived closer to nature than most.
It helped that he was a vet's son. He and his siblings spent their early years among animals of every shape and size, absorbing the details of their internal biology through vivid dinner-table conversations with their father and, from a remarkably young age, watching surgeries firsthand. Beyond the house, the family camped constantly, often in remote places well off the tourist trail. At just two years old, Zarek toddled to within petting distance of a large Meru baboon before his father rushed in to scoop him to safety. Long car journeys, flooded tents, tsetse flies and marauding monkeys did nothing to put him off; if anything, they only deepened his hunger to travel further. And on the nights they weren't out in the bush, uncles and his father's colleagues would fill the house with tales of wildlife encounters and far-off adventures.
The passion that would define his life arrived when he was eleven. His geography teacher started a birdwatching club, and Zarek joined - blissfully unaware, at first, that his classmates considered birding "nerdy." By the time they made their opinions clear, he was already hooked. Birding became his first real love, and his family nurtured it with binoculars and an ever-growing stack of bird books.
Curiously, when he left for university, the idea of building a career out of his love for nature never quite occurred to him. He studied engineering drafting instead - a field he excelled at and genuinely enjoyed - yet he couldn't picture himself doing it for the long haul. Searching for something that fit, he came across a handful of guide-training academies in South Africa. It was there, mid-training, that everything clicked into place: a true lightbulb moment, the dawning certainty that this was what he'd been meant to do all along.
Those years in the wild shaped more than his skills; they shaped his worldview. Standing on foot or huddled in a flimsy tent at the heart of a thunderstorm, trees crashing down nearby, taught him just how small and vulnerable we are. And yet, driving across the continent and watching the scale of habitat destruction and biodiversity loss unfold over his lifetime taught him the opposite lesson too - just how vast an impact this vulnerable species of ours can have. An ecological education, he's found, means seeing problems where most people see nothing at all, and witnessing the steady erosion of the natural world has been the hardest thing he's had to watch across his life and career.
That conviction fuels the way he guides. Early on, Zarek made a simple decision: if an opportunity came knocking, he'd answer it and figure out the details later. He has guided plenty of trips without pay simply for the chance to be there — and has never once regretted it. It's how he came to work in some of Africa's more unusual corners, with Chad and Gabon ranking among his very favourite countries to guide in.
On safari, his enthusiasm is impossible to miss. Hear an interesting frog call on a night drive, and you can be certain Zarek is already leaping out of the vehicle to track it down and show his guests. He's been known to convert staunch anti-birders into willing converts - it all comes down to passion, energy and an insatiable desire to keep learning about the natural world. A safari with him is defined by that wide-eyed wonder, whether he's hopping through muddy puddles after frogs or easing slowly along a riverbank in search of an elusive leopard.
As a Gold Level guide, Zarek is deeply familiar with local wildlife, cultures, and landscapes, including seldom-visited destinations such as Gabon and Chad. He holds a Level 2 qualification with the Field Guides Association of Southern Africa (FGASA) and a Level 3 Track & Sign qualification with Cybertracker, the non-profit network for wildlife trackers - credentials that sharpen his ability to read the signs and behaviours of the animals encountered along the way. Yet for all his qualifications, Zarek is careful never to take for granted the collective, traditional knowledge of Africa's indigenous peoples. He holds the deepest respect for the ancient wisdom and skill held within local cultures - knowledge he believes he could never fully attain himself - and he works to include representatives of Africa's rich diversity of ethnicities throughout his safaris, weaving their wealth of understanding into the fabric of every journey.
Away from work, he spends as much time in nature as he possibly can - birding his local patch, snorkelling and heading out on safari with family and friends (with a confessed soft spot for video games when time allows). Those who know him would likely describe him as sincere, empathetic, caring and fiercely passionate about biodiversity.
More than anything, Zarek hopes his guests leave with something lasting: a sense of wonder at the marvels of nature, a sense of urgency to protect it, and a sense of responsibility for the part we all play. He hopes they begin to look beyond the big, charismatic game, to notice, and to treasure, the smaller wonders that make up the living world.
Home location: Kenya
Guides in: across Africa, specialising in Kenya, Tanzania, Gabon and Chad.
Languages: English
Daily rate: $$$
