Rachel Nonoo

Operations Manager

After studying media, Rachel saved to disappear off the radar and travel Australasia. Destinations included Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia (including Java, Bali, Lombok and the Gili Islands) before exploring the whole of New Zealand in a camper van. She also travelled and lived in Australia, working as a travel agent for about a year before coming back to the UK to work for Natural World Safaris. Rachel is a keen traveller and wildlife enthusiast, having travelled lots or Europe and the Middle East previously.

Favourite Destinations: The South Island in New Zealand, for the shear beauty of it. We visited in May/June time, between seasons when snow was starting to gather on the peaks of the mountains. The colour of the water, the sky everything was stunning and we found ourselves constantly leaning out the window to take photos of the most random ‘spectacles’! The Gili Islands were amazing too, 3 tiny remote islands surrounded by a beautiful ocean brimming with interesting and diverse species – I was lucky enough to swim with a turtle around Gili Meno.

Best Travel Experiences: Watching the sun rise from Gunung Bromo, a live volcano in West Java. Smoke plumed behind us as we sat on our own, private volcano (there was no-none else around) – the sight was elating and awe-inspiring. The fact that we had woken up at 2.30 to hike over 3 hours up hill all the way to the National Park, before even starting the near vertical climb up the volcano became irrelevant. The smell of sulphur and the realisation that we had to make our way back all that way only hit us after the adrenaline had worn off! At least it was light and down hill on the way back!

Worst Travel Experience: This has to be when we were travelling from Bandung to Batu Karas in West Java in search of some relaxing surf time away from the city. After being convinced by a local that the train would take about 12 hours, we eventually agreed to get on his mini bus for the trip; 4 hours would be better than 12 right? Wrong. As well as my travel buddy, there was just the driver and one other person – both of which claimed not to speak a word of English and I don’t think they could understand our feeble attempts at Bahasa Indonesia. After about 7 hours of driving, it got dark and the novelty wore off, the bus had been stopping every now and then to drop off and pick up packages and everything felt a bit dodgy. It was like they forgot we were there. The panic set in when we saw a road name and looked it up in the guidebook - we were heading the wrong way. We tried to speak to the driver and he acted like he couldn’t hear us, all we could do was sit and wait until we stopped again, so pen knife in hand we waited to see what was going to happen, stories of kidnap playing through our heads; no-one but us knew we were there. Then they just stopped, got out the bus and started shouting at each other, I think they were fighting over who was going to take us where we actually wanted to go. Eventually one of them got back in the car and we arrived in Batu Karas at 1 in the morning (14 hours after we departed for our 4 hour journey!!), it was pitch black and we had no where to stay. Due to some very friendly, and drunk, locals we found a chalet to sleep in, and getting out of that bus was one of the most relieving moments of my life!