OUR STORY
Visitors to Africa
Founded in 1995. Relaunched in 2027. Built from the very beginning on one simple idea: looking after people.
I was born on the West Coast at Langebaan, grew up on the edge of the Constantia vineyards, and have been coming to the Walker Bay coast, where I live today, for sixty years. Southern Africa is not a destination to me. It is home.
I started Visitors to Africa in 1995 because I wanted to share that home with people properly: not as a tour, but the way you would show a dear friend the places you love. For six years we ran journeys across Southern Africa full time, for families, couples and small groups from all over the world.
In 2001 my work took me abroad. Over the years that followed I lived in eight different countries, and my working life was built around hosting and looking after people from every corner of the world. Through all of it I kept coming home, and each year I took one or two private journeys through Southern Africa for associates and for people who came to me by word of mouth.
Now, in 2027, I am bringing Visitors to Africa back full time, from my home in Hermanus. We are working closely with two of the leading operators in Europe and the Far East, and our first groups of the year are already in the making. Everything I have learned in thirty years of looking after people goes into every journey.
John Sparks
Me at Kraalbaai on the Langebaan Lagoon in January 1968, near the rock where Eve’s footprints, left 117,000 years ago, were later found.
The Langebaan Lagoon on the West Coast, where I was born.
THE FILMS
A few moments from the journey
Southern Africa is not a destination to me. It is home, and I want you to feel at home in it too.
PERSONALLY HOSTED
When you travel with us, you travel with me
I plan every journey myself, around the people travelling and the moment in their lives, and I host many of them in person. I want you to see this country the way I know it: the roads I ran as a boy, the beaches my family has walked for sixty years, the people and places I have known for half a lifetime. My job is to open those doors for you, and then to make sure every hour of your time here is well spent.
Hosting has taken me into rooms I never imagined. On a few occasions I accompanied celebrities and world-champion sportsmen to meet Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and simply being in the same room as them was one of the great experiences of my life. Later I came to know the family personally: Mr Mandela’s daughter, Zenani Mandela, and I became close, and we flew to the United States together on business. Through her I met Mr Mandela and Archbishop Tutu away from the crowds. Moments like those taught me that the most remarkable people want the same things as everyone else: to be looked after with warmth, discretion and care, and to be allowed to enjoy themselves.
Looking after people runs in my family. We are the fourth generation here in the Cape. My mother’s family, the Stuttafords, were behind the founding of Garden Cities in 1919, which built Pinelands, the first garden city in South Africa. More than a century later our family trust is still building homes and communities across the Western Cape, and through its Archway Foundation it funds and builds school halls and helps children in underprivileged communities. I grew up believing that you look after the people and the places around you, and I still do. In Stellenbosch I personally built a clubhouse, the beginnings of a school, for the Songo Foundation and the underprivileged children it works with. That same care is at the heart of every journey we make.
HOW WE LOOK AFTER YOU
Wrapped in care, from arrival to farewell
Your safety, always in mind
In thirty years I have looked after presidents, kings, world-champion sportsmen and very security-conscious guests, many of whom travel with security at home but come to us without it. They have explored Southern Africa happily and confidently, and we bring that same care to every guest.
At sea and on land
I have logged more than 250 hours in helicopters with Air & Sea Rescue along our coast. Knowing this coastline and its moods is part of how we keep our guests safe.
Giving back
We care about the communities we travel through, and I personally built a clubhouse, the beginnings of a school, for the Songo Foundation in Stellenbosch.
