For Khun Tao, October 2026
Private journeys through Southern Africa, built from the places I know and the people I've known for years, and hosted by me from the first evening to the last morning.
Khun Tao,
Thank you for wanting to hear more about what we do. I've put this page together so you have something to look at while we talk, and something to come back to afterwards.
Visitors to Africa is small on purpose. I host every journey myself, and every journey is built from places I know first-hand and people I trust. What follows is a little of where I come from, and where I would take you.
I'm looking forward to our conversation, and to hearing about Taonithikorn Media.
John
I was born on the West Coast, at Langebaan. There's a photograph of me as a small boy sitting on a rock beside the spot where Eve's Footprints were later found: the tracks of someone who walked across a wet dune there about 117,000 years ago.
I grew up on the edge of Klein Constantia and trained as a young runner on the gravel roads between the Constantia wine farms. In Stellenbosch, Waterford Estate stands on land that was once part of my family's farm, Stellenrust. And for sixty years my family has come to the same stretch of shore on Walker Bay, near Hermanus, where I live now.
None of this is in a brochure. It's simply where I take people, because it's where I'm from.
Our journeys are private, for families, friends and small groups. I travel with the guests throughout, alongside a guide and a small team I've worked with for years. We also work with tour operators abroad who want a partner on the ground who knows the country well, and we design each journey together with them.
I don't promise what nature does. I'll tell you plainly what we've arranged, and what belongs to the weather and the animals. In my experience, that honesty is part of what people remember, along with the moments nobody planned.
Table Mountain, the Constantia valley and the old estates of Stellenbosch, seen through the families who still farm them. These are the roads I ran as a boy, and many of the doors open because I've known the people behind them for a long time.
Each year southern right whales come into the bay below the Hermanus cliffs to calve. You can watch them from the cliff path, and on a private boat we lower a hydrophone so you can hear them too. How close they come is entirely their decision.
Langebaan's lagoon, the fishing villages, the spring flowers in good years, and the place where Eve's Footprints were found. It's where my own story begins, and one of the quietest coasts in the country.
Mountains, San rock art and long walks in the foothills. I've brought guests to Cleopatra Mountain Farmhouse at Kamberg since 1999, and Richard Poynton, who was cooking there then, is still in the kitchen today.
A mountain kingdom set entirely inside South Africa, with high passes, Basotho villages and horses, and the great waterfall at Semonkong. I spent many months there between 2021 and 2025, and friends there still welcome us in. Very few visitors ever see it.
Big Five reserves free of malaria, a few hours from Cape Town and in KwaZulu-Natal, and the larger parks further north for longer journeys. After more than 300 camps, I know which ones suit which travellers.
These are three of the journeys I've built for next year, written out day by day. They'll show you better than anything I can say how each day is thought through.
September Tides is thirty days on the road in Southern Africa, written as it happened: whales beneath the Hermanus cliffs, a walk over the mountain into Hemel en Aarde, mornings on the Keurbooms River and nights on a koppie far to the north. Every chapter is a real day with real guests.
In 2001 and 2002 I organised the first flights carrying scientists from Cape Town to Antarctica, working with Russia's Novolazarevskaya base and landing Ilyushin aircraft on a blue-ice runway. Until then, the journey took a month by sea.
It's a story for another day, but it says something about how I like to work: find a better way, then go and do it properly.
From Bangkok, most routes connect through Singapore, Dubai, Doha or Addis Ababa into Johannesburg or Cape Town. South Africa is only five hours behind Thailand, so the long flight brings very little jet lag.
I'd love to hear from you what Thai travellers already know about Southern Africa, and what they'd want to understand before they come.
I'm glad we're talking. Whatever comes of it, I hope this gives you a feel for the Africa I know.