Jack has more hobbies than fingers and toes. We stopped counting at 20, right after he told us he’d purchased an easel and beret. Good thing he lives in France. For a man so enamoured by cooking with goose fat and garlic it’s odd that he’s so spry. Perhaps it’s the regimen of capoeira, cycling, drumming, dancing, and rock climbing? Or maybe the mental gymnastics of self-taught database development? The only thing we know for sure is that when Jack’s in the room it buzzes with energy.

Read Jack’s Sounder posts here.

Greg likes to go native. It can be a problem. When he packs his bags for Africa, you know he’s hoping to spend 3 months with no shoes on. When he heads out on the road, we have to cut off his credit cards after a while to make him come back. He likes to slip the knot. The way Greg travels is the way he goes about the rest of his life—a persuasive mixture of the serious and the playful. He’s grown up a lot from the side-burned sports-car driving runaway from the circus who started Trufflepig on a wing and a prayer. But he hasn’t grown up too much.

Read Greg’s Sounder posts here.

It is said that when Dan visited the Silverback gorillas of Rwanda, they immediately embraced him as one of their troop, then groomed him and fed him some bamboo. That’s just an ancient African legend, but we believe it. This man is our very own in-house Bear Grylls… but more menacing. And much taller. He has charged elephants, stared down lions, and (understandably) shrieked like a little girl when a hippo came after his canoe. When the apocalypse eventually comes, he will be the esteemed and courageous leader we follow to safety. And what kind of person would you rather have planning your safari in a strange land?

Dan is listed on Conde Nast Traveler’s Top Travel Specialists List for Southern Africa.

Read Dan’s Sounder posts here.

Anton has been working in travel since the original formation of the Perito Moreno Glacier. His personal conquests of South America put Magellan to shame, and while it’s Carnival and blue-footed boobies that he knows best, he also has a back pocket (and suitcase) full of other widespread know-how. Traditional Indian flower market? Anton can take you there. Seeking a cliffside break in Big Sur? Just ask Lynch. Volcano walking in Iceland? You should meet Antoniyk Lynchbjornsson. Both humble and sly, our South American specialist is based out of his rainy homeland of London, but he is frequently enticed across the sea by as little as an empanada or two.

Read Anton’s Sounder posts here.

There’s only one person we know who can effectively lasso together a Trip Piglet with one hand, while booking 643 South American hotel arrangements with the other. Known as The Wrangler, Wrangles, and occasionally Wrangledog (said in the most affectionate way possible), Victoria is a Jill-of-all-trades who knows exactly where to find everything in the office, even when it seems lost among Charlie’s junk priceless antiques. All of this is without even mentioning that she’s the super-organized Robin to Anton’s Batman. Robin never gets as much credit as he really deserves.

Read Victoria’s Sounder posts here.

It stands to reason that the guy who taught James Bond to dance flamenco has a knack for moving. But long before he schooled Pierce Brosnan in  ‘Sevillanas’ (good luck trying those steps at home), Sebastian was finding his feet all over the world. Raised between Colorado and Chile where both of his parents come from, he ditched a post-grad career in academia for a year of guitar playing in Spain. Naturally, this evolved into an enthusiasm for mastering Arabic and several years running a beautiful hotel in the medina of Fez. Cut to a few years travelling in Spain & Portugal, collecting an encyclopaedic knowledge of both countries, and a dangerous penchant for sherry along the way. And now he’s finally (finally?) settled and married in Rabat, Morocco, strumming up brilliant itineraries like the multi-linguist virtuoso that he is.

Sebastian is listed on Conde Nast Traveler’s Travel Specialists List for Morocco, Spain & Portugal.

Read Sebastian’s Sounder posts here.

Caitlin (aka CJ) keeps the lights on at Trufflepig. We run hundreds of trips worldwide each year, in dozens of different countries and currencies, and with thousands of suppliers, ranging from private islands in the Seychelles to Giorgios the shepherd in the Epirus mountains (guess which one doesn’t take Amex). And through it all, CJ performs the not inconsiderable miracle work of keeping everything tight, clean, legal, and (hardest of all) presented in a format even we can understand. She may not travel quite as much as some of her colleagues, but she sure can go far down the rabbit hole when spreadsheets are involved. CJ is the one truly irreplaceable person at Trufflepig, and we’re not giving you her email address because we’re scared she’ll get head-hunted by the Mob.

Having grown up on the US rodeo circuit and after spending years travelling to exotic locations all over the world, there was simply no chance Yvonne would content herself with vanilla corporate life. And so, almost inevitably, in the late 90’s she traded her cubicle and casual fridays for Africa, and never looked back. She’s done everything from moving horses across the USA in cargo planes to driving damn near every inch of road south of the Sahara, happy sleeping on the side of the road in Malawi or in the plushest safari camps in Botswana, and anything and everywhere in between. It’s safe to say she knows what she’s on about and can connect the dots with a precision and flair that is a marvel to behold. When it comes to planning the perfect safari (or if you have questions about horses) we can think of few better.

Read Yvonne’s Sounder posts here.

Most weekends you’ll find Claudia at the cottage in Ontario, planning trips and sweating it out in the wood-fired sauna, which is a bit farther afield from her hometown of Dresden, where Claudia, grew-up behind the Iron Curtain. She’s ever grateful that “pesky wall” fell before her growing desire for travel could cause problems with the Secret Police. We’re extremely grateful too otherwise she may have missed finding her future husband in that Ecuadorian prison, only to follow him to Canada, which ultimately led our favourite German adventurer/philosopher to Trufflepig HQ. Armed with a simple mantra of “travel is freedom,” paired with her weekly tradition of Sausage Wednesdays, her love of cheese and her natural appreciation of efficiency—we’ve one heck of an intrepid trip-planning maestro that the central and eastern European hinterlands deserve. Turns out it’s also the realm Claudia’s always been drawn to in the first place – so yes we agree, “travel is freedom”.

Claudia is listed on Conde Nast Traveler’s Travel Specialists list for Germany, and on Wendy Perrin’s WOW list for Germany and the Netherlands.

Read Claudia’s Sounder posts here.

Meredith has squeezed a great deal into her three-plus-something decades on the earth. After escaping her native Minneapolis, she’s somehow had time to live in Germany, Italy, France and the Dominican Republic – not forgetting Canada of course – and to travel far, far wider than that. She’s not only learnt French, Spanish and Italian (and I mean really learnt them – she can swear and enthuse and cajole and discuss politics and order coffee like a native), but she’s understood that language is only half the battle, so she’s learnt to dance the salsa, the tarantella and the tango. Oh, and she’s raised 3 kids, too. There is that minor detail. Perhaps that’s why she’s so in touch with her inner-child. In fact, she recently wondered if she was ‘too whacky for Trufflepig’. Please. That’ll be the day. We hired Meredith to plan trips in Italy, where a strong sense of playfulness and childlike enthusiasm is hard-wired into the culture. Serious playfulness? Thoughtfully childlike? It’s a winning oxymoron that Meredith has right under control.

Read Meredith’s Sounder posts here.

After spending a childhood in the Netherlands plotting her departure for warmer climes from the back of a rain-soaked bicycle on the way to school (and a couple of university degrees), and via a decade-long diversion in Paris working for the OECD, IEA and UNEP, Jacoline finally landed in Greece in 1998, with a toddler, a one-month old baby, a Greek husband, and a determination never to go back to an office job. So began her adventure discovering the best small hotels of Greece, starting with a handwritten list of 10 characterful little places, and growing to three exemplary books, hundreds of hotels and a superb website which makes clear that there are very few stretches of the country’s 13,000km of coastline she’s not checked out. Yes, Jacoline literally wrote the book on it, and we admired her trip planning nous from afar for many years before timing, serendipity and sheer good Greek luck allowed for Trufflepig to entice her in to the fold, to benefit from her superior understanding of and love for her adopted country in all its whim and wonder.

Jacoline is listed on Conde Nast Traveler’s Travel Specialists list, and on Wendy Perrin’s WOW list for Greece.

Read Jacoline’s Sounder posts here.

Having a secret crush on your Trufflepig planner is quite normal, especially when your planner is Tyler Dillon. Born & raised in Georgia, engrained with southern charm and charisma to spare, Tyler took to the road like a suckling to the teat. While he has been mostly everywhere, it was Asia that won his heart. Tyler has spent the past decade living, guiding, writing books and planning trips in China, Mongolia, Burma, Bhutan and beyond. Despite his childlike enthusiasm for the world, he is now a celebrated industry veteran, and we are very proud to have him join the Trufflepig team. 

Tyler is listed on Conde Nast Traveller’s Top Travel Specialists List for Cambodia, China, Myanmar, Vietnam, Mongolia & Bhutan.

Read Tyler’s Sounder posts here.