We are an travel planning company specialising in personalised, ethical journeys to Southern Africa. We are Philip Rendel and Elizabeth Sayigh: we came to live permanently in South Africa in 2000, originally to work as teachers (and we’re still very much involved in education). Around 2006, we moved to Cape Town and bought a guesthouse, Parker Cottage, and slowly built it up. Over eight years, we took it from no. 248 on TripAdvisor to no. 1, an award which we won three years in a row. With the guesthouse at the top of its game, we decided to diversify. We sold the guesthouse in 2017 and started Where It All Began, a travel design company exclusively focused on South Africa for the discerning, independent traveler.
We live in central Cape Town and spend a lot of our time travelling the country, particularly the lesser-known areas. We have two dogs, Jasper and Peanut, who accompany us whenever and wherever possible!
What do we do?
We’re travel designers: like any designer, we start with you, the client in mind and build a bespoke product just for you. Our aim is to build your perfect trip to South Africa for the price you want to pay. We take into account the level of luxury you’d like, the level of independence you prefer and the amount of activity versus free time you’d like to incorporate. All our suppliers are either fully accredited ethical and responsible businesses (either by Fair Trade in Tourism or Green Tourism) or they are owned and managed by historically disadvantaged individuals.
Why use us to plan your trip?
Where possible, we only use fully accredited ethical and responsible businesses as our suppliers. We carry this principle through from accommodation to transport even to dining - this means that every penny you spend goes directly to the support of businesses that are responsible to both people and planet.
We nearly always get a better price than you would booking the trip online yourself, often beating Hotels.com and Booking.com prices.
We spend our time seeking out the high-quality, unusual and off-the-beaten track places that you would struggle to find on your own.
We build the entire trip for you, taking care of all the boring and irritating logistics of flight times, car hire, insurances and payment to each place.
We work with your ideas and build the trip around them: you can use us for the whole trip or just bits of it, as you choose (most travel agents don’t let you do that).
We stay in touch with you on a daily basis whilst you travel, making sure that things are set up exactly as you’d like them.
We’re a Fair Trade approved and fully accredited, insured and licensed travel agency. We’re a member of SATSA which is a local bonding affiliation like IATA or ABTA, meaning that whatever you pay us for your trip is covered no matter what happens to us as a company.
