SHIFTING SANDS

By harnessing the power of luxury tourism to fund scientific projects, Kisawa Sanctuary aims to protect the Indian Ocean and its people

- SEAN O'TOOLE

Mozambique, the emergent southeast African nation now home to Swiss entrepreneur Nina Flohr’s Kisawa Sanctuary, is sometimes described as the pearl of the Indian Ocean in reference to its stunning 2,470km-long tropical coastline. Recognising this, Flohr has made the aquamarine waters surrounding Kisawa a strategic feature in her ambitious first development, a ‘resort-toresearch’ venture on Benguerra Island, the second largest of six islands in the Bazaruto Archipelago in southern Mozambique.

Set amid pristine dunes on the southern tip of Benguerra, Kisawa is a blissful hideaway conceived and piloted to completion by Flohr’s Dubai-based design studio NJF. The core of the resort is a collection of 11 one-, two- and three-bedroom residences, tactfully located out of view of one another. Each residential compound has its own open-air deck space with infinity pool and thatched kitchen and living room. Befitting its luxury pedigree, Kisawa offers fine dining at three dedicated sites, as well as a wellness centre with a menu of Ayurveda treatments and, uniquely in Africa, Iyashi Dôme infratherapy.

But it is the variety and profusion of marine life that is Kisawa’s real draw. Large sea animals abound here, among them manta rays, hammerhead sharks, various turtles and dolphins, game fish like marlins and wahoos, as well as migratory humpback whales. Bazaruto is also home to the last viable dugong population in East Africa. One imperturbable member of this critically endangered species of sea mammal, a relative of tropical Atlantic manatees, has a reputation for foraging sea grass in the shallow waters off a neighbouring island.