Staff Spotlight: Daniel Kaul

Having traveled for most of my life, I'm able to look back on a lot of fantastic travel memories. Some of the highlights that come to my mind right now:

• Working as a volunteer in different national parks around the USA during my college years. I remember the great feeling we had when we finally finished the drystone steps in Rocky Mountain National Park.
• Watching Orcas off the coast of Vancouver Island – an amazing experience!
• The first time tracking elephants on foot in Botswana – what a stunning moment!
• Taking part in our Wilderness Experience Course in Argentina: a pack trip on horseback around the Patagonian Cordillera. If you want to understand what “breathtaking” means, go there!
• Places I’ve visited that left a lasting impact on me: the impressive Okavango Delta in Botswana, Uruguay’s capital Montevideo as well as Uruguay itself, and Bryce Canyon during sunrise.

I think all of our students return with great stories, so it’s hard for me to choose one. Here are my top three favorites:

• Two girlfriends who did a sabbatical in the Seychelles are now thinking about a career change – one of them has already quit her job.
• One of our volunteers, whose plan was to study business management, decided to study forestry after he returned from our nature conservation project in the USA.
• Two of our Wilderness Experience students went to South Africa as boyfriend and girlfriend and came back to Germany as fiancés.

Very easy to answer for me - all of them! Each project and each course is special and differs from others; however, all of them offer the chance to actively contribute to protecting our world’s natural habitats and the species that live within them.

I am always proud of my team! What also makes me proud is the way NATUCATE has grown.

Within a short amount of time NATUCATE has developed from a small start-up into a recognized travel agency, offering sustainable and reliable projects and providing detailed customer care to our volunteers and students.

In our opinion, the economics’ phrase ‘learning by doing’, is the ideal way to become sensitized for the fields of nature and species conservation. That’s why we focus on combining meaningful activity and nature adventure, which we believe leads to further education, personal development, and individual qualification.

I think honesty and transparency toward clients, partners, and colleagues as well as keeping up your company’s values are key factors in being a successful company. Another factor surely is the care that we hold for each of our participants – from their first telephone call or email to the day they return.