Geoff Tennant
Geoff Tennant is proof that a midlife crisis can be a good career move, as long as you have two of them.
He started in banking in South Africa and the UK, where he learned to read a balance sheet and to spot a bad investment from a long way off. He then spent about eight years running a wood-fired pizza restaurant, which taught him patience, crowd control, and how to keep smiling at a hungry table. Both skills turn out to be very useful halfway up a mountain.
These days Geoff is a nationally registered Cape Town tour guide (licence WC14954) and a certified Wilderness First Responder. That means he can tell you the story behind a view and also patch you up if you fall off it. He has led hikers across the Cape, down into Namibia’s Fish River Canyon and Naukluft trails, and through the rugged Drakensberg mountains, which he considers his spiritual home. He has also driven 4x4 overland tours far enough to know which roads deserve respect.
Geoff also writes about Southern Africa’s landscapes and the people who shaped them. History runs in the family, though some chapters are the kind families usually skip at Christmas lunch. While following the paper trail of his ancestor Alexander Tennant, a Scottish-born merchant, Geoff found that he was one of the last slave traders at the Cape. Geoff tells that story straight, because heritage left half-told isn’t heritage.
Every Cape Hikes and Tours outing is run by Geoff himself, so the person who answers your email is the person who meets you at the trailhead. He has guided countless German-speaking groups without speaking German, which proves that a good story, a pointed finger and a well-timed “wunderbar” can get you a long way.
Geoff knows his Cape wines well, and his liver has the references to prove it. On tour, though, he’s strictly on water, because a guide who “just tastes a little” at every estate soon becomes a guide who needs a guide.