First tourist fly to the Island of St Helena!
After 24 hours on the Island, well-travelled Patrick Maselis and his family departed St Helena earlier today, having become the Islands first tourists to arrive and depart by airplane.
Patrick and his family, who had arrived from Belgium via Africa, had fulfilled a lifelong aim of visiting St Helena. Having already visited Ascension Island some time ago, he had always wanted to visit St Helena, but found the journey by ship very inconvenient within his current lifestyle.
When it was announced that St Helena was having an airport built, he followed every step of the way, looking forward to a certain visit. Earlier this year, No Limits Travel and Tours or St Helena tours and Travel was contacted by a travel Agency, wishing to facilitate the visit upon the opening of the airport. “That’s exactly what we do” we (No Limits) responded and over the months a plan slowly came together. Of course, there were a number of problems, firstly the planned opening of the airport did not take place as anticipated, then once the airport was categorised and declared open, the original charter company did not meet the required criteria, but with help from the operations team at the St Helena Airport, everything was worked out and the visit was on! At a quarter to 12 yesterday (Wednesday) a Bombardier Challenger 300 business jet aircraft operated by ExecuJet arrived safely at St Helena Airport, becoming the eighth fixed-wing aircraft to land at St Helena Airport and the first to bring tourists to the Island.
The Jet ZS–ACT is based at Lanseria and arrived from Togo, carrying Patrick, his wife Ciska and son Matthew.
Met by No Limits Travel and Tours who facilitated the entire visit, a pre agreed programme was embarked upon immediately; Driving from the airport, a stop was made to visit Longwood House, before moving onto Farm Lodge Country House Hotel. An afternoon tour followed before pre dinner drinks and a St Helena Buffet at the Richards Travel Lodge, where they mingled with other guests, one of whom was celebrating a birthday.
A further tour took place today, before being returned to the Airport and returning to Belgium via Burkina Faso.
The highlights of the visit, was definitely the Napoleonic tour attractions, the fortifications, the Islands remoteness and of course they were astounded by the scenery. Patrick also took the opportunity to post a very large number of postcards from a very unique location.
We were delighted that this project became a reality. Our clients are delighted with their visit and admitted that if there was a regular air service, they would definitely be back and this time for a few days.
St Helen’s No Limits Travel and Tours under the auspices of Island Images provides individual and group tours to leisure clients. We offer pre-arranged tours, custom packages according to client specifications, travel consultation, and making reservations for lodging amongst other related services.
We can also be contacted via our contact page and we will respond to you the same day.
