Kisawa and the Pursuit of Happiness

I have struggled lately to understand what luxury actually is.  It’s hard to define; that much is certain, and it’s completely overused as a word — I have the marketing emails to prove it, each one assuring me that some new-build in a car park next to a Wetherspoons is luxury.  And if that wasn’t enough, I’m stuck in this conflict between the experience and the property.  For me, a luxury hotel is no longer the joy it once was, when so much of the experience is just about fancy interiors that look good on social media.  I could not care less about banal dick-measuring contests like thread count.  I don’t mind whether it’s woven from the civet that shits out coffee beans costing more than gold, or from that paper bag in American Beauty, as long as it’s comfortable.

This is a very long and boring way of saying: if something’s too good to be true, it usually is.  Not here.  Kisawa defines luxury.  Like all the great ultra-luxury beach resorts, it makes no economic sense, and arguably no practical sense either, given it takes fifteen minutes to drive from one end of the property to the other.  In a property that now has just eight rooms.  But that is precisely the appeal.

I wish we didn’t live in a world where all my favourite properties are massive loss-leading vanity projects.  But Kisawa is proudly in those ranks, and I love each and every owner for it.  And rather resent them too, because it makes everywhere else annoyingly rubbish by comparison.  Boo to those pesky non-elites wanting to see some coin back.  So yes: just like Velaa, just like Laucala, and just like Fregate undoubtedly will be, another billionaire is subsidising not merely my holiday but my happiness.

Three Rooms Down

Coming back somewhere you love after a few years can sometimes be a daunting task. You have changed.  Your expectations have changed.  The competition has changed.  But not here. Because the competition hasn’t got close to catching up.  Properties like this aren’t churned out every few years; if we’re lucky we get two a decade.  Lately, nobody has come close.  This is still the pinnacle.

The joy of returning came with the sadness of knowing what I’d find when I got there.  Three rooms were wiped out by a cyclone not long after my first stay.  I guess even Mother Nature was jealous of this place.  The ocean rooms have been swept away by the ocean, which is at least honest about the naming.  Most properties hire consultants to discuss shrinking inventory to hike rates.  Kisawa outsourced the exercise to the Indian Ocean.

And thaaaat is about it.  All the changes discussed.  Why change greatness?  It remains absurdly beautiful, set on the most beautiful stretch of water I’ve ever seen, with sand banks and greenery and a sense of wild.  On the short helicopter flight in we passed two groups of rays, like they were showing off.  (I told the children we’d be taking a helicopter in the morning.  Alia’s response: “awww, they don’t have TVs on those.” A parenting achievement I’ll be celebrating for years.)

Last time I came in May, this time in August, the coolest month of the year, with a slight-to-rather-noticeable breeze.

Cove Story

We found ourselves in Cove 3, a one-bedroom with annex.  An annex bigger than most suites you’ll ever stay in.  The annex is basically a second room — full-size bath, dressing room, two beds, its own everything — and turns a one-bedroom into whatever configuration your week requires.  For us with two young children, it was perfect.  Although, as always, best laid plans – I still somehow ended up sleeping in a queen bed next to my five-year-old.

The day area sits underneath, which is the single cleverest decision on the property.  When, in your own home, do you return to your bedroom during the day?  The day area is where you’re supposed to enjoy the day, the bedroom is simply for returning to at night.  Why has no one else copied this?  Lack of imagination?  Or probably funds.

But inside the room, an absolute delight.  I knew what to expect, but I fell in love all over again.  It’s so beautiful, elegant, authentic, and absurdly large.  Even the woven ceiling is beautiful, which is a sentence I resent writing. I’m long past the age of admiring hotel rooms.  I admired this one.  I’ve been trying to think of anywhere with a better aesthetic that still feels genuinely of its place, and I can’t — though establishing that properly would involve research, so I’ll go with hyperbole instead.

Even the temperature was perfect.  I don’t like sleeping with air conditioning on.  Here there’s no need; the rooms hold the heat as though designed by somebody who had actually set foot in Mozambique.

Moke

The activities were a lesson in timing.  Whale season had only just started, so that will have to be next time.  Dugong watching produced, generously, one dugong, if I’m to believe that was in fact one we saw racing away.  We walked the beach to the red dune and had a picnic beside water advertised as containing crocodiles, which contained no crocodiles.  But I’m a big boy and know full well that nature ain’t your pet that chases after you and gives you cuddles, comfort and what you want.  Shall I throw in the cliché “it’s the journey, not the destination”, as we still enjoyed all the activities?  Sure, why the hell not.

Kisawa with children is yet another reason I’ll keep coming back.  A dedicated childminder alongside the butler, and staff so willing that we simply started leaving the kids with them and collecting them later in the day, mildly sandier and entirely happy.  They tore around on the mokes with the horns going, taking turns at “driving”.  Floyd did sketches for them to take home.  Everyone made their stay – and ours – paradise.

The food is where even more generosity shows.  Where else do you get a private table beside the main pool and go entirely undisturbed?  How many all-inclusive properties throw in wagyu and lobster?  And yet it was the roast chicken I still think about.  Nothing is rationed, nothing is off-menu, and the variety is completely bespoke, rebuilt for us daily.  A property with eight rooms has three restaurants.  Obviously it does.

Portraits

The GM met the helicopter and drove us to the villa himself.  The stay list was spot on, down to my beloved pillows.  The chef is the same one as last time. Our butlers could not have been kinder or more capable.  On the walls hang portraits of the staff who’ve been here since opening, which is a lovely gesture that makes the place feel even more like a family.

That’s the bit that often fails when you think money can buy everything.  You can commission the architecture; you cannot commission a team that cares.

The Snag List

I can – and will – say they need to heat the pools, even though I asked so damn nicely three years ago.  Even my children, who will swim in a puddle, wouldn’t get in, as it was so cold.  And they could add a few extra facilities here and there, like a hot tub, a sauna, something extra that makes you want to go to the spa other than to spend €120 on a thirty-minute guided meditation.  How can anyone relax at those prices?  That’s €4 a minute to focus on my breathing.  Oh, I’d notice it alright; I’d notice it quicken.

Then there was the water.  One morning it took over ten minutes to run warm, and on another day it stopped working altogether.  It was fixed almost immediately both times, but it shouldn’t be happening at all.  Not at this level, and whilst I accept I’m not a scientist, I’m told water is one of the more important ones.  Definitely annoying.

And sunset at 5:30 pm, when England at this time of year barely gets dark before nine, so if they could sort out the Earth’s axial tilt that would be appreciated.  But these all, somehow, become minor quibbles. Cos even when the wind arrived and the weather had a hissy fit and we spent most of a day shut in the room, it was still a joy to be in.  And every single time I walked back to it, I felt that same sense of joy.

Conclusion

I spend more than 120 days a year travelling.  Somehow, the answer is always “more”.  Maybe the next property will offer what I’m searching for.  Yet then, in that precise moment, on that very private beach, I looked up at my family, at this property, at those sand dunes, and that landscape, and water, and privacy and exclusivity and kindness and understood that luxury is easily definable – you just need to experience it.

We sat on the beach around a fire.  Properly rustic, properly remote.  Just us, the flames, and our butler bringing marshmallows over for s’mores.  And our other butler entertaining the children.  And a third person hurrying down with the biscuits.  And a fourth with the drinks.

Roughing it.

And I look around, and I think this is it.  I have climbed the mountain.  For all my miserable, honest takes on luxury hotels — this is me at my happiest.

I don’t need somewhere entirely void of people, but having this intimacy and sense of exclusivity and the service together is what makes true luxury.  Add the elegance of a design that somehow stays local, the space you’re given, the sense of place.  The wildlife.  The landscapes.  You can visit properties with every facility and amenity conceivable and come away feeling processed.  Then there’s Kisawa, similar to a handful of other remote destinations – thin on paper and beyond anything you could actually want.

By the last evening, Alia had stopped complaining about the helicopter’s missing television.  She wanted to know when we were coming back.