Night sky with star trails and silhouette of trees.

about big skies

Reshaping the
African tourism story.

Every place on earth sits under the same sky. Yet care arrives so unevenly — pooling where the postcards are taken, thinning where they aren't. Big Skies was founded to challenge that version of conservation. We stand for landscapes without a mainstream tourism footprint, the communities beyond the gates, and the kind of traveller who suspects the best of the world isn't always where everyone's told to look.

The Big Skies Way

Our mission is to foster community and environmental harmony for ourselves, our guests and our staff under the same expansive sky that connects us all. To do this we have 6 guiding principles: 

  • We work as a family at all of our camps. As such, it is important to treat each other with respect, practising fairness in all steps of operation.

  • Although our guests’ experience comes first, we do usually favour fun over formalities.

  • We believe there are many different types of knowledge and ways of thinking. The best way to understand is to listen, learn & recognise that we are not always right

  • We understand the definition of conservation as a moving target. Presently we are using the following: “conservation is a collaborative coexistence, fostering nature-human harmony, and sustainable, equitable practices for marginalized persons.”

  • We are not interested in greenwashing. We have to be responsible for our footprint which includes CO2 emissions from our operations and our guests reaching our camps. We are therefore pescatarian (the fish we use are caught from local fish traps which supports the local fisher-people), we hire 80% from KwaMpukane (only not hiring locally when a specialist skill is not available), we purchase 60% of our produce locally and we recognise we can always‍ do better

  • Guest experience is at the core of the business. We are willing to go the extra mile to make our guest experience spectacular.

A smiling man with a beard wearing a bucket hat, indoors with a blurred background.

James McCulloch

managing director
A man standing outdoors in a grassy field with bushes and a cloudy sky in the background, holding a drone controller in his hand.

Nkosinathi Eugene Tembe

community partnership director
A young man with light skin, short brown hair, and blue eyes, standing outdoors at night, wearing a white T-shirt.

David Middleton 

operations director
A man smiling while wearing a blue Big Skies t-shirt, a wide-brimmed hat with sunglasses on top, and a scarf around his neck, standing outdoors with a wooden background.

Mbongeni Myeni

head guide