Your guides to the natural world
Our highly experienced conductors navigate your adventure with a touch of class and open your world up to the questions laying buried in the mysteries.
We show you how to investigate, learn and slow down to see the great treasures that can be revealed.
Katherine Mathias
Observe Afrika was created by Katherine Mathias, a South African whose career has taken her from the creative industries to safari, horses, conservation and hospitality.
Katherine was born in Johannesburg and grew up travelling with her family to the Kruger and other wild places across South Africa. When she was young, her family moved to the United States, where she spent 19 years, including time in Hollywood working across film, music, fashion and production.
She returned to South Africa in 2004 and spent the next twelve years working across creative, production, marketing and business.
In 2016, she moved into the safari industry, beginning with Singita Grumeti in the Serengeti, Tanzania, where she managed construction logistics for a luxury lodge and a workforce of more than 250 people. She went on to work at Singita Sweni in the Kruger, manage an international medical volunteer lodge, run an off-grid retreat and build her own businesses.
Horses have been part of Katherine's life since childhood. She has ridden and guided on horseback since her late teens, with riding experience across South Africa, the United States, Israel and elsewhere. In 2020, she managed 43 safari horses at Ant Africa Safari in the Waterberg, overseeing their welfare, training, safety and stable operations. She has also worked with and visited a number of horseback safari operations across Southern Afrika.
Conservation is an important part of Katherine's work. She has trained alongside K9 anti-poaching units and holds K9 anti-poaching dog-handling qualifications, as well as her FGASA field guide qualification through Nature Guide Training.
For Katherine, safari is about more than finding the Big Five. It is about understanding the landscape, the animals, the people who protect them and the smaller details that are easy to miss if you are simply passing through. Those details are often what make a place memorable.
In 2022, Katherine began developing Observe Afrika, bringing together her experience in safari, hospitality, operations, animals, conservation and business. Since then, she has worked with lodges, guides, operators and conservation projects across Southern and East Africa.
Most recently, Katherine spent a year working for a corporate safari company as a Southern Africa Reservations Specialist, designing and booking more than 60 safaris and managing each journey from the first enquiry through to departure.
Today, based in Hoedspruit, South Africa remains the heart of what she does. Her focus is on creating well-planned safaris that put people in the right places, with the right guides and experiences, while giving them a genuine understanding of the places they are visiting.
Observe Afrika brings all of this together.
South African at heart. Afrika and beyond.
Frank Castro
Frank grew up in Malibu, California and has spent much of his life traveling in search of perfect waves, beautiful peaks, and inspiring wildlife safaris. With experience working in various capacities with teams on film productions, in restaurants, and lodges in Los Angeles, Spain, South Africa and Tanzania.
After managing a luxury safari lodge in Tanzania, he ended up joining one of the leading mountain climbing outfitters in East Africa as the International Sales & Marketing Director. This gave him the opportunity to climb most mountains and volcanoes in East Africa and develop adventure programs. Frank pioneered mountain biking safaris in Tanzania, trekked with local Maasai into new areas, and built deep relationships with local communities.
For many years he spent travelling the continent of Africa visiting top end lodges and camps and curating programs for tour operators and people from all over the world. He had dreams of starting operations in other destinations to expand out of East Africa and thereafter became a principal partner of Adventure International, a travel company. Adventure International provides full service luxury adventure trips to remote destinations around the world, and emphasises training programs, safety, ethics, and social responsible travel.
Their first expansion point out of Africa was into the Himalayas and commenced the company’s own operations in Nepal. After exploring massive sections of the land, they decided that the next area to set up operations was in Peru and the Andes. Currently Frank concentrates on climbing & trekking efforts in Tanzania, Nepal, and Peru but has gone well above and beyond those areas. Frank can safely say that he has covered the globe extensively in his travels.
“I have deeply enjoyed the countless hours finding, organising, and promoting adventures around the world for almost a decade. I have supported some of the top brands in the industry with luxury adventure outfitting. You will often find me surfing when I’m not biking, trekking or doing yoga. I reside in Venice Beach with my wife and young daughter, life is good”.