After graduating with a biology degree from the University of Exeter in 2013, I took advantage of a unique opportunity to work as the assistant manager of an ecolodge in Belize, before returning to the UK and joining Audley as a Latin America specialist in 2015.
Over the last decade I’ve travelled extensively in Central and South America, exploring 19 countries in total through a mixture of Audley research trips and independent backpacking trips, experiencing spectacular hikes, colonial architecture, paradisiacal beaches, flavourful cuisine and charismatic wildlife.
Away from work I enjoy playing football, running, playing piano and improving my Spanish.
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Q&A with Tomas
What’s the best local dish you’ve tasted?
A Belizean dish that really blew me away is rice and beans with fried snapper. Although this may sound a bit basic, in reality it’s truly fantastic, with fluffy white rice cooked in coconut milk, kidney beans flavoured with coriander, freshly caught snapper seasoned with garlic, a generous helping of Marie Sharp’s habanero pepper sauce, and a couple of thin slices of caramelised plantain. The perfect accompaniment to this typical dish is the Belizean national beer, Belikin, which comes in five versions; regular, light, stout, chocolate stout (Christmas) and sorrel stout (Easter).
What's your most vivid travel moment?
One travel experience that definitely stands out is the morning I woke up at sunrise to venture out onto the deck of my room at El Remanso, an ecolodge in Costa Rica’s megadiverse Osa Peninsula. Whilst I was enjoying sweeping views across the rainforest canopy with a freshly brewed coffee in hand, a troop of spider monkeys began launching themselves, using their prehensile tails, from tree branch to tree branch only metres in front of me, just as a pair of scarlet macaws soared overhead, painting the sky a palette of red, yellow and blue.
Where would you love to travel next?
I would love to travel around Venezuela, which is the only country that I haven’t yet visited in Central and South America. My ideal itinerary would be learning about ‘Chavismo’ in Caracas, coming face to face with Angel Falls, climbing the otherworldly and biodiverse tepui of Mount Roraima, seeing the indigenous Warao communities on the Orinoco Delta, riding the world’s highest cable car and hiking in the mountains around Merida, and relaxing on the tropical beaches in Choroni.
