The Tiny West African Tropical Getaway You’ve Never Heard Of
The island nation of São Tomé e Príncipe is aiming to become the fashionable getaway of choice for the worldly, eco-conscious traveller.
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Landing at the airport on the tiny West African island of Príncipe, the plane seems to skim the top of the dense jungle canopy, almost like a pebble skipping the surface of the water. Runway and shack-like terminal aside, there’s barely any evidence of human intrusion into the Jurassic Park–like landscape. Later, as you roam through that jungle on foot, the sensation of time warping is only magnified. The strange caws and yelps that ricochet round the canopy, evidence of the dozens of unique bird species here, could just as easily be a dinosaur’s, out of place and time.
It’s an impression that also hit Mark Shuttleworth when he first touched down here in his Bombardier jet over a decade ago, casting around with his pilot for a handy pit stop between his two permanent bases, the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and Cape Town, South Africa, where he grew up. “I was looking for an out-of-the-way place where I could essentially just enjoy being at ease with nature in Africa,” he recalls. Though he admits, “I was almost going to write this off,” his mind changed, quickly, after disembarking on Príncipe. “My overwhelming impression was that this was both extraordinary and extraordinarily fragile. And I wanted to take the opportunity to do something with the people there that gives them something unique in the world, forever.”
That impromptu mission—he even showed up at the president’s office unannounced, without an introduction, seeking a meeting—has become a driving force in Shuttleworth’s life and turned the country of São Tomé e Príncipe into one of his primary passions. The 48-year-old South African–born multimillionaire has plowed more than $138 million of his fortune into Africa’s second-smallest nation by area (after the Seychelles), aiming to shore up its economy and thereby help prevent uncontrolled exploitation of its chief resource: nature. His plan is to lure wealthy, eco-conscious travellers here, mimicking the high-spending, low-footprint tourism strategy proven successful in Rwanda and Botswana, for two examples.
São Tomé e Príncipe investor Mark Shuttleworth. Maique Madeira
Ten years in, concrete results are now becoming apparent, with three hotels up and running and another on track to reopen by year’s end. HBD Príncipe Group, the company he created for the project, prioritizes the social good, but its chief executive, Malcolm Couch, expects to break even in two to three years and begin generating a profit within a decade. Couch says HBD will reinvest any earnings in the island’s economy.
“We’d want to say to other folks who may have wealth that they wish to do something with, perhaps in other parts of the world, that you could use this model. We’ll show you how to do it.”
Shuttleworth has an estimated fortune of approx. $920 million, accrued mostly through tech start-ups. He’s famous for splurging $28 million of it to go into space 20 years ago as a paid passenger on a Russian Soyuz craft, the first person from his continent to do so, earning him the nickname the Afronaut. It’s a misleading headline-grabber, as Shuttleworth is no playboy prone to frittering away his money on gimmicks. Think of him rather as the antithesis of countryman Elon Musk. He wants to deploy his enormous wealth during his lifetime and in productive ways that emphasize social—rather than social-media—impact. At the same time as he was prepping for space, he established the Mark Shuttleworth Foundation, which provides small grants to Shuttleworth Fellows, who pursue humanitarian and environmental projects around the world, including, but not limited to, in São Tomé e Príncipe. One recent grantee is working on tagging turtles here, to monitor their laying habits.
Such social engineering, and patrician largesse, can reek of neo-colonialism—a charge that Shuttleworth doesn’t dismiss. He understands the complexity and optics of a wealthy, white African funneling his fortune into a poor, majority-Black nation in the 21st century. “I think there is a profound difference between national dominance and investment, but they can sometimes get intertwined,” he tells Robb Report in a rare interview. “I have no real interest in extracting anything from Príncipe or exploiting it. It would be crass to think in those terms.” Shuttleworth presents his intentions as altruistic: “Príncipe is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to steer development in a different direction.”
Fishermen bringing their daily catch to shore. Elsa Young
Shuttleworth believes he is not alone. “I see other very successful, privileged people almost universally have a desire to do something good with their gains in life,” the reclusive Shuttleworth says. “But it’s difficult if you try to do that in your 80s, because you end up with a very limited set of options. I wanted to use the energy and perspective I could bring to bear as a younger person.” And unlike many of his peers, he sees no need to bequeath his wealth; Shuttleworth is resolved to never becoming a parent. “I had the snip in my early 30s to make damn sure, because I came to the view you couldn’t be a great parent and really great at difficult things,” he offers, unprompted. “The fact is that the evidence shows you’re going to be happier, have a better quality of life and a vastly decreased carbon footprint if you don’t have children. I wish we celebrated and talked about that more.”
The missions that appeal most to him are signaled by the HBD name: The acronym stands for Here Be Dragons, an old cartographer’s shorthand for terra incognita. It’s a nod to pushing boundaries and also suggests why he’d champion a place like São Tomé e Príncipe. The tiny, twin-island nation is barely 1000 square kilometres in total landmass and is volcanic in origin. There were no permanent inhabitants when Portuguese explorers chanced upon the lush, rocky land in the Gulf of Guinea in the late 15th century. They encountered true virgin territory, where almost every inch was heavily forested; the colonials commandeered the land to repurpose as plantations. Initially, they produced sugarcane, but that crop was elbowed aside on the order of the Portuguese king around 1820; deploy the fertile soil, he decreed, on the new, lucrative crop of cacao. The tree had been co-opted by Europeans after they stumbled on it in Brazil, and the chocolate produced by its cocoa beans became a global obsession—so profitable for the Portuguese-speaking world that cacao remains slang for money. By the mid-19th century, what’s now São Tomé e Príncipe was one of the world’s foremost cacao producers. For labour, the industry initially relied on enslaved people, and then indentured workers after slavery was outlawed in Portugal’s colonies in the mid-1870s. Many of those laborers were imported from other Portuguese fiefdoms, notably the Cape Verde islands. They lived on vast roças, estates that functioned more like miniature countries than companies; each typically had its own hospital, food supply and railway.
A restored colonial-era building overlooking Ana Chaves Bay on the coast of São Tomé. Elsa Young/Frank Features
In the early 20th century, the cacao industry here came under fierce critique from the British, whose best-known chocolatiers were Quakers, longtime abolitionists who viewed the indentured labourers as enslaved peoples in all but name. Rowntree, Cadbury and Fry eventually succeeded in implementing boycotts of the islands’ crop. (It may not have been coincidental that cacao producers from nearby modern-day Ghana—then a British holding known as the Gold Coast colony—were competing for the same market.) The snub, along with the islands’ struggle for independence, which was won in 1975, and post-colonial hardships, proved almost lethal to São Tomé e Príncipe’s main industry, and many of the roças fell into disrepair. Since then, some have been rebooted, and cacao remains synonymous with the country. Comprising a majority of the nation’s exports, the produce is touted as among the world’s best and is used by countless luxury chocolatiers. But São Tomé e Príncipe has another asset that Shuttleworth believes could be even more valuable: the land itself.
The larger, dominant island, São Tomé, is more populous, with almost 97 per cent of the country’s just over 200,000 residents. It has plenty of ramshackle charm and a relaxed affect summed up in the local maxim léve-léve, or easy-easy. Water sloshes around the rocks at the Boca do Inferno, or Hell’s Mouth, on its east coast, shooting up in unpredictable spouts; the beach nearby is a fine surfing spot thanks to those same waves. Piglets often scamper down the roads; one resident jokes that owners push them into the street, as the local custom compels any driver who hits a pig to both hand the carcass back and pay appropriate compensation. The capital, namesake city has a faded glamour, its beachfront rimmed by a colonial-era promenade with missing chunks like a gap-toothed smile. In the center, Claudio Corallo, the country’s best contemporary chocolatier, makes his products, which have been sold at high-end shops around the world, including London’s Fortnum & Mason. In Africa for almost five decades, the 70-year-old expat Florentine leads taste-and-tell classes at the factory he built from two shipping containers in his backyard. The raw material on which he relies is cacao from his farm on Príncipe.
The Príncipe kingfisher, one of many species unique to the island. Elsa Young/Frank Features
And it’s Príncipe that is the real draw for most visitors, as Shuttleworth quickly realized on his first trip; today, with the exception of the Omali hotel on São Tomé, most of HBD’s in-country operations are focused here. The smaller island, around 50 square miles, is a UN biosphere. It’s home to dozens of creatures indigenous only to this country, leading it to jostle with the much larger and better-known Madagascar for rights to the lazy but useful sobriquet “Africa’s Galapagos.” This richness of unique fauna is a legacy of the land’s volcanic origin: The island’s never having been connected to the continent proper allowed species to evolve without its influence. Praia Grande, one of Príncipe’s largest beaches, is prime turtle-nesting territory. Leatherbacks and green sea turtles scuttle along the sands starting in late fall to lay their ping-pong-ball-sized eggs under the watchful protection of a local nonprofit. By February, hatching season has begun, and for three months or so, the sands teem with tiny turtles as they exit their nests and make straight for the choppy seas.
In the colonial era, both islands held plantations. On São Tomé, many remain in some form, quarters for enslaved people often still used as housing. On Príncipe, though, the jungle has reclaimed most of the grander roças, with nearly 60 percent of the island’s landmass reserved as a national park. The best way to see it is by sailing through the Baía das Agulhas, or Bay of Spires—on a fine day, the skyscraper-like igneous-rock towers are free of mists, spiking above the canopy into the sky. Hike through the undergrowth on foot, and it’s easy to discover a man-made detail—a brick bridge, perhaps, or some old railroad tracks—that seems out of place in the wild forests, like an outtake from the finale of Planet of the Apes.
The O Quê Pipi Waterfall on Príncipe. Scott Ramsay
If you want to stay on Príncipe, HBD now owns and operates three hotels here, each anchored in the landscape in a particular way. “Príncipe is incredibly safe, remote and everybody knows everybody—that’s sort of unique,” Shuttleworth says of the strategy behind his tourism operation. “It allows us to try some things we wouldn’t in other places.” Take Sundy Praia, a tented camp on the beach, which was built from scratch four years ago and is deliberately hidden from view so as not to impinge on the untouched landscape. It lacks barbed-wire border fences or any other evidence that the local community is unwelcome; indeed, one Sunday morning, a group of teenagers loll on one of its beaches. Each structure has been built to minimize its impact on the land and can be removed leaving virtually no trace. The air smells warm and slightly moist, and the only sound other than the birds is the waves. A gray-bearded lepidopterist, one of the hotel’s guests, appears occasionally from the undergrowth, net in hand, questing for specimens of the island’s unique butterflies; he has been coming to Príncipe for decades to combine vacation with a little fieldwork.
A 15-minute walk up the hill is Roça Sundy, a former plantation home that has been repurposed as a 16-room hotel. Close by sit the sanzalas, erstwhile quarters for enslaved people, which 150 or so families still occupy; many of the residents work on the cacao farming that HBD has undertaken on the property. The final holding is Bom Bom (Good Good), the island’s best-known hotel, which sits in an extraordinary setting, perched on a promontory wedged between two beaches that face east and west, respectively, ideal for sunrise and sunset both. The cabin-like rooms connect by a bridge to a tiny islet that’s home to the resort’s restaurant and bar. An avian-friendly garden, planted by Shuttleworth’s bird-watching mother, helps draw the island’s exotic species to flutter through the property.
The infinity pool at Sundy Praia, a five-star tented camp on Príncipe. Scott Ramsay
Robb Report has exclusively previewed the next phase of HBD’s efforts on Príncipe. Bom Bom, first built as a fishing lodge in the 1980s and currently shuttered, will receive guests again later this year, after an extensive renovation. “We’re celebrating those extraordinary beaches, that kind of Robinson Crusoe feeling of just you on a beach that no one has ever been to before,” Shuttleworth explains. “When you’re sailing past Bom Bom in the future, you won’t know it’s there.” Sundy Praia will get a new spa, as well as an alfresco gym, integrated into the forest. HBD has also bought a building in the island’s tiny capital, a 40-minute drive away, where it will create a new market, gallery, offices and restaurant, as well as a few guest rooms. And at Roça Sundy, the company plans a renovation of the sanzalas. Shuttleworth hopes they will be reborn as a marketplace for São Toméans to sell food or crafts; the families currently residing there will decamp to an HBD-constructed modern village nearby.
HBD has made significant efforts to ensure its building projects aren’t destructive, even inadvertently. Shuttleworth has worked to provide an economic uplift as a result of HBD’s presence—all but one of the 50-plus staff at Roça Sundy, for instance, are São Toméan. (As is still unfortunately common in the African hospitality industry, the general managers of all three properties are white.) Many of the employees live in the sanzalas, and guests can even dine there at a restaurant run by one of the women, who cooks up superb fresh-caught calamari and fish to serve at a long table wedged under the wooden awnings that jut out from the old concrete quarters. As for the environmental side, Emma Tuzinkiewicz arrived in March as HBD’s first on-site sustainability director, lured from an executive role at KKR & Co. in New York. HBD is also part of the Long Run, a nonprofit that brings together resorts and lodges in remote destinations around the world, from Kenya to Australia, collaborating to share sustainable practices.
A papaya and passion-fruit smoothie served at the property’s Oca Sundy restaurant. Elsa Young/Frank Features
“It’s very important that the people who are there now feel like they had a hand in shaping things,” Shuttleworth says, acknowledging that the new housing development he’s funding and into which the current sanzala residents will move, has a name that might seem patronizing, at best: Terra Promitida, or Promised Land. But the community chose it for themselves. “I was taken aback, as it’s a little awkwardly biblical for my taste. After I got over my eek, at the very least we know this community desperately wanted better [housing] and saw this as their best shot.”
Shuttleworth has actively engaged with São Toméans from the outset, seeking their counsel. “My first impression of [Shuttleworth], I confess, was suspicious. I thought, ‘Why would a young man, apparently in his 30s, be interested in investing in a lost island in the Atlantic?’ ” José Cassandra writes in an e-mail.
The 57-year-old was regional president of Príncipe island for 14 years, until August 2019, and worked closely with Shuttleworth as HBD’s interest in the country grew and their visions aligned. Cassandra notes approvingly of that resettlement project, as well as HBD’s approach to job creation, preserving the island’s natural resources even as unemployment levels were high.
Cassandra dismisses concerns of neo-colonialism outright, noting that locals already occupy several senior roles across HBD’s various enterprises. “We need investors who believe in the potential of our country, in various domains like agriculture and tourism, and will involve people and train them, as HBD has done,” he writes. “This will contribute to creating a national know-how to assume our own development projects. The opposite would be some kind of colonialism.”
Blue-and-white azulejos above the main altar in Sé Catedral de Nossa Senhora da Graça (Our Lady of Grace Cathedral) in São Tomé. Elsa Young/Frank Features
It’s heartening to hear, but Shuttleworth remains aware of the uneasy bargain into which Cassandra and his country entered. “I would say it’s sort of icky to see a place like Príncipe, so fragile, precious and beautiful, and do nothing,” Shuttleworth says. “One might easily look at it, and think, ‘This will soon be destroyed,’ and then walk away. Development tends to follow a tragic curve, with a tremendous destruction of culture and identity. Would the locals and that environment end up in a better place if I did nothing? That’s unanswerable.” He’s perhaps being modest: When he first took interest in the island, the Sundy plantation area had been earmarked for sale to Agripalma, an oil-palm business, which would have felled the rain forest to replant it with palms—an economic uplift, for sure, but an environmental catastrophe. Shuttleworth and his team petitioned the government that they could create jobs without destroying the jungle.
Shuttleworth’s efforts are certainly well placed in terms of the trends in African tourism, according to Deb Calmeyer of Roar Africa, the elite travel specialist. “There’s a new wave of places that are becoming reachable and just about luxurious enough without [a guest] needing to be a pioneer adventurer,” she says. “It’s sad that when Americans think of Africa, it equals safari—the coastlines are sometimes so dramatic, and you can have the feeling of living on the edge of the wilderness on African beaches. You’re not going to find overdone, heavy-traffic resorts like in the Caribbean. There’s a raw beauty.”
Diving to a sunken airplane at the bottom of Bom Bom Bay. Scott Ramsay
São Tomé e Príncipe remains one of the least-visited countries in the world—it logged only 33,000 visitors in 2018, before the pandemic slashed numbers. The count is destined to remain comparatively low, at least in part for logistical reasons: International flights are limited to connections to a few West African hubs, including Accra in Ghana, and the colonial holdover route to Lisbon. Private jets are a handier way to visit.
Which is how Shuttleworth continues to alight here three times a year for monthlong stays on his properties, enabling him to remain involved, firsthand, with HBD’s efforts. “After a week in Príncipe, I feel like I’ve deepened something about myself— somehow soothed and challenged at the same time,” he says. “Life passes us by no matter what, and we only get to wake up and go to sleep so many times, and this feels like something that’s profoundly important.”
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About Last Night: ‘Culinary Masters 2024’ Celebration at Song Bird
Highlights from the gastronomic extravaganza honouring Neil Perry as our standout chef of the year.
Robb Report ANZ hosted hosted a glittering event last night, feting Neil Perry as the standout chef of the year, at his new Double Bay restaurant, Song Bird.
Editor-in-Chief Horacio Silva fronted a packed room of titans of industry, influencers and gourmands for a gastronomic extravaganza staged over three floors.
Esteemed guests included C-Suiters Michael Saadie (NAB Private Wealth), Maria Lykouras (JB Were), Nick Hooper (Jacob & Co.) and Gretchen (Aware Super), as well as ASX Refinitiv Foundation’s Gerard Doyle, dashing adventurer/philanthropist Luke Hepworth and Atomic 212 founder Barry O’Brien. They savoured an exotic menu crafted by Perry, while enjoying exquisite Petaluma Yellow Label wines. They also got to admire stunning Jacob & Co timepieces and sample chocolates graciously provided by Gaggenau.
The menu featured produce-driven Cantonese specialties, such as delectable Wollemi Peking duck paired with Hoisin sauce, various condiments and homemade pancakes, as well as Abrolhos Island sea scallops elegantly presented on the half shell with vermicelli noodles and a dressing of black bean, garlic, and ginger.
The chicsters in attendance were among the first to experience the buzzworthy new restaurant, with the evening made possible by our fantastic partners Gaggenau, Jacob & Co., Petaluma Wines, NAB Private and Codigo 1530 (with support from Kanebridge Media, The Royal Automobile Club of Australia, Citizen K and ASX Refinitiv).
To be a part of next year’s 2025 Culinary Masters and other coming events, sign up to our weekly newsletter or visit https://robbreport.com.au/events/
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Quiet Storm
Ibiza’s more chilled side—yes, there is one—makes for the perfect backdrop for the new generation of Rolls-Royce’s game-changing Cullinan SUV. Let’s get this peaceful party started.
Every sunrise is a party in Ibiza. Indeed, often it seems like unadulterated hedonism is actively encouraged on the most infamous of the four Balearic Islands, a sun-draped paradise where dusk-to-dawn dance parties segway into swanky beach-club afternoons (often involving more dancing), enjoyed by a melting pot of wealthy international pleasure seekers whose sole aim is to party, and party hard.
While everything you’ve heard about this Mediterranean Bacchanalia by night is likely true, during sunlight hours, the isle tends to move to a slower, more tranquil beat. The laneways around the main hub of Ibiza Town (or Eivissa in Catalan) are populated with pink-skinned tourists who drift from A to B in large, meandering groups. Some are boozing their hangovers away; some are on the deep-fried tapas road to recovery. When they’re not lizard-lounging beside hotel pools, the remainder appear to spend daytimes overindulging their credit cards, either in the endless strips of shops or waiting in queues at the ubiquitous beauty salons, ready to glam-up for the big night ahead.
Streetside, market stalls selling mostly Asia Pacific-sourced “spiritual” paraphernalia are juxtaposed by edgy clubwear stores and high-end fashion boutiques. It may have surface-level notoriety, but Ibiza also enjoys a rich dichotomy; a place where travellers cosplay billionaires, and the billionaires live like bohemians.
This is far from big news to locals and those in-the-know. Since the 1950s, when the island became a haven for avant-garde artists and free-thinkers—notably during the Spanish Civil War—Ibiza has lured a certain type of one-percenter who’s keen to live by the codes of modern luxury but doesn’t want to do so in a flashy, gauche way.
It’s exactly the kind of niche customer that Rolls-Royce claims to intimately know as it launches its new, second-generation Cullinan here during a two-day media jamboree, aiming to not only evolve alongside its clientele but set the tone of affluence itself. Since its 2018 launch, the SUV has remained the crown jewel of the Rolls-Royce stable, a global bestseller that has become a go-to daily driver for many, largely because the promise that came with the vehicle was simple: effortless everywhere. It presents a different profile to the marque’s more formal town cars and coupes—such as the Ghost and Phantom—and offers a Rolls-Royce package that is more social, spacious and adaptable for all of life’s needs and all the roads one may want to travel—including the ones we’ll drive over the next 48 hours.
Our adventure begins around 30 minutes’ drive north of Ibiza Town’s party district on the quieter side of the island, the preferred base of many HNWIs who now call Ibiza home. We’re staying at the secluded Six Senses Resort, situated on the northern tip of the peninsula at Cala Xarraca. The immediate area is surrounded by nature trails, sleepy villages and expansive views of the Mediterranean Sea, while the resort itself has a private, pueblo-like feel, its terracotta buildings engulfed by beds of charming wildflowers. In this corner of the isle, for the right price, world-class DJs who spin at iconic island clubs like Pacha and Amnesia are available for house calls and famed chefs create intimate culinary moments behind closed doors. Enrichment can also be found through spirituality and emerging wellness experiences, such as grounding cacao rituals, sobriety coaching, sustainability education sessions and longevity-focused health clubs.
If you’re currently wondering what place a Rolls-Royce has here, remember that privacy and serenity are hallmarks of this storied brand. And in terms of high-level bespoke offerings, craftsmanship and a real-world view of sustainability focused on things made to last, few automotive brands on the planet can match the expectations of those who inhabit this island.
The next morning, we hit the road. Our initial drive takes us towards the west coast, passing charming white-washed villages, pine forests and olive groves that grow out of red dirt. Cullinan’s torquey, 6.75-litre, V12 engine leaps into action when called upon, and combined with the instinctive feel of the steering, manages to hide its somewhat behemoth size. Though the scenery is divine, the tarmac is undulating, but on the cliff-lined curves and uneven surfaces, the plush underpinning of the Rolls-Royce’s signature “magic carpet ride” ensures we barely feel a bump.
Arriving at our first destination, the marina of Santa Eulària des Riu (where a local informs us that the yacht flying a Dutch flag belongs to F1 driver Max Verstappen), the Cullinan cuts a commanding presence. And here, as our steed’s vibrant paint glistens under the Spanish sun, and its lines nod to those found in the mid-size yachts and chic speedboats in the harbour, it starts to make sense why this car would feel so at home in Ibiza.
Cullinan’s new exterior design has a fresh and sharper sense of verticality, evidenced in the more upright lines, crisp edges, and a more powerful-appearing illuminated Pantheon Grille. As someone who wasn’t that much of a fan of Series I’s appearance, these additions give the car more attitude, making for a pleasant surprise. Some dazzling new paint options are on offer too, such as Emperador Truffle. This minimalist, solid grey-brown was inspired by richly veined brown marble, and when combined with the bespoke “Crystal Over” finish, a lacquer infused with glass particles, elicits a mesmerising sunlight-like shimmer.
Before long, we embark on the next leg of our journey, towards Cala Jondal on the far south of Ibiza, best known for its buzzy, upscale chiringuito (the Spanish word for beach bar), helmed by Sevillian chef Rafa Zafra, formerly of the celebrated El Bulli restaurant. This time, we take an inland route, passing bewildered locals not used to seeing a Spirit of Ecstasy statue close up.
As fun as it is to drive, being a passenger in the Cullinan is an experience in itself. The deep-pile carpet is particularly transcendent, likewise the 18-speaker Bespoke Audio system with its 18-channel, 1400-watt amplifier. Who needs Pacha and Amnesia.
Relaxing on the back pews also gives us a chance to run our eyes over the car’s other interior highlights, not least the cityscape-inspired illuminated facia panel, made using a technique which involves 7,000 dots being laser-etched at different angles and depths onto darkened security glass, leading to a striking, multidimensional effect. Naturally, there’s the option to create your own motif in collaboration with the marque’s bespoke design team.
Speaking to customers’ desires for more boldness, there’s a range of new interior textile options, including an artistic leatherwork technique for the seats, dubbed Placed Perforation, whereby tiny perforations are made in the material to create a custom artwork design; plus, an alluring embroidered rayon fabric textile made from bamboo, a modern reimagining of the type found in historic Rolls-Royce cars. Its development was inspired by the bamboo grove of the Côte d’Azur’s Le Jardin des Méditerranées, a beloved spot of the marque’s co-founder Sir Henry Royce.
Rolls-Royce’s pleasingly pedantic approach to sweating the small stuff can also be seen in its use of an open-pore veneer called Grey Stained Ash, which took four years and six specially trained craftsmen to develop and is individually stained and arranged in a pattern to best suit each car.
This hands-on, artisanal ethos, however, doesn’t come at the expense of contemporary digital elements. The relatively small footprint of Rolls-Royce means it’s able to stay more closely connected with its clientele, and in the Cullinan, via a customer-only app called Whispers, the brand can stay in contact with customers and share new bespoke offerings, relevant lifestyle content and events.
After a dazzling lunch at Rafa Zafra’s beachfront Cala Jondal—which certainly should be first on Whispers’ list of hot dining spots—it’s time to make our way back to the airport and say a regret-tinged adios to the Cullinan.
Details play a role in the meaningfulness of a personalised car, and the stories they allow an object to tell. This is a particularly true at Rolls-Royce, where every car model is handmade to order; where one can select a moment in time and have it mapped out in stars on the roof; where you can bring a box of crystal champagne flutes and have them crushed and mixed into paint; or where you can request a veneer made from your favourite backyard tree as a child. The possibilities are infinite.
As we’ve seen over the past two days, embodying the spirit of an Ibiza-based billionaire might just come down to the unwavering pursuit of personal optimisation. Maybe that’s the bigger ideology at play here under the Balearic sun: that the Cullinan represents a unique kind of private hedonism, a euphoric moment between driver and machine. For now, though, the exhaustion from all the driving is taking its toll. Or maybe, just maybe, we’re tired from dancing into the night to the DJ who came to our private villa the night before. In one way or another, this island always captures you.
The Rolls-Royce Cullinan will be available in Australia in late 2024, price on application; rolls-roycemotorcars.com
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Only The Good Die Young
In a future of floating billionaire summits, do we really want to live forever?
Two thousand tech moguls, shamans, CEOs and DJs packed together on a cruise ship for what organisers call “invitation only, one of a kind experiences where super humans make magic”. What could go wrong? That’s the pitch for Summit at Sea, an event billed as a “floating Davos” for millennial technocrats, staged in international waters off Miami. But even if the marketing lingo sometimes threatens to sink under its own weight (“Wherever your gravitational force takes you, our constellation offers wonder”), Summit at Sea captures something about the zeitgeist of what billionaires are looking for now.
They want woo-woo; they want to microdose mushrooms, ketamine and LSD (as championed by the likes of Sergey Brin and Elon Musk), and they most certainly don’t want to die. This issue is about those issues. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel are among the squillionaires bankrolling longevity initiatives—presumably to live long enough to be able to spend all their money. But as Alison Boleyn reports in her first story for Robb Report, even those outré efforts—Thiel is said to receive blood transfusions from people under 25—pale when compared to venture capitalist Bryan Johnson, who reportedly spends $2 million a year on anti-ageing methods. For those of us who can’t afford eternal life, however, the good news is the world is still full of earthly delights.
Take the healthful effects of the Greek island of Tinos or driving the new Rolls-Royce around Ibiza, for example. We also check into an integrated wellness clinic in Thailand and a luxury resort in Spain that focuses on gut health—miso soup and a side of algae, anyone?—and luxuriate in Guerlain’s stunning new day spa outside of Athens. And we spend time with Rory Warnock, a breathwork practitioner and ultra-marathon runner whose tips for curing anxiety and promoting wellbeing are being sought by everyone from CEOs and Olympians to companies like Google and Bupa. And like us, he’s also partial to a well-made negroni. Oh, waiter? Maybe we’ll let the ship sail without us.
Robb Report ANZ’s Issue #38 is now on sale. Pick up your copy of our September issue for an invigorating upgrade for the mind, body and wardrobe.
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Forever Young
You’re born, you live, you get old—right? Well, not according to a growing legion of death-dodgers who are prepared to pay any price to reverse the ageing process.
It is, by any estimation, a meeting of strange bedfellows. Gathered here tonight, at the table of a centi-millionaire venture capitalist living in Venice, California, are Kim and Khloé Kardashian, Kris Jenner and the manfluencer-neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. And the reason this hybrid crew has assembled? Part evangelism, part investment drive, and mostly to discuss how to never, ever die.
The menu that evening—black lentils over drifts of veg with berry-strewn nut pudding—nodded to what the head of the table eats every single day, albeit in separate sittings and all before 11.00 am. Bryan Johnson, who sold Braintree Venmo to PayPal for US$800 million (around $1.2 billion) in 2013, now devotes his life and fortune to winding back his biological age. What he calls his “Don’t Die Dinners” manifest a trend in health and wellbeing where the vision of living to 120, 150 and beyond, has moved from anti-ageing scientists, elite athletes and tech eccentrics to a whole new level of celebrity.
“The two futurist topics everyone is obsessed with right now are artificial intelligence and living forever,” says neuroscientist and futurist Joel Pearson. “Interest in longevity has exploded over the last eight months and that’s because of Bryan Johnson’s Don’t Die campaign.”
In March, when doctors injected 300 million young Swedish bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into Johnson’s knees, hips and shoulders, it was in a clinic in the Bahamian resort owned by Justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods. The 47-year-old—that’s in chronological years; his heart has the biological age of 37—consumes 32 kg of vegetables monthly and more than 100 pills a day, hits bed strictly at 8.30 pm and will repeat the MSC therapy next year so his joints match his already youthful bone mineral density. Other biomarkers show he has the cardiovascular fitness, muscle mass and nighttime erections of a fit 18-year-old. Johnson’s waking hours are devoted to a regimen of therapies and exercises continually recalibrated by a team of more than 30 doctors, with one goal: to slow down the ageing process. Or as Johnson is fond of saying: “Is death no longer inevitable?”
One of Johnson’s July dinner guests, the charismatic Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, has helped propel this notion of extreme longevity. Huberman Lab is Apple Podcasts’ most popular health and fitness show, and the 16th most popular podcast across all categories. His self-optimisation ethos appeals to the acolytes of the show’s manly backer, former UFC fighter Joe Rogan.
“It’s that bro science,” says Pearson, who heads the Future Minds Lab at UNSW and himself adheres to a routine of saunas, kava and red-light therapy to improve sleep. “It’s the young guys in the gym with the ice baths and the hormones and the hunting.” (Because testosterone declines in men starting from their 30s, attempting to boost the hormone through abstinence has become an ideology of a particularly butch patch of anti-agers; getting good-quality protein by shooting your own is another.)
DJ Steve Aoki (46, but biologically 33) has equipped his Las Vegas home with ice plunge tubs, saunas, pulsed electromagnetic field mats, a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and a tea bar . He has “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” tattooed across his neck and says he’s signed up for “the full-body freeze”—the cryopreservation of his body for future revival.
While US-based futurist Dr Divya Chander says this euphoria around stretching longevity has not extended to women—“I think they still feel limited by their biology”—Hailey Bieber has shown that the gender divide might be shifting. On an episode of The Kardashians, the 27-year-old model (biological age unknown) underwent an intravenous infusion of NAD with her friend Kendall Jenner. NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is a compound in the body that supports cellular process. “I’m going to NAD for the rest of my life and I’m never going to age,” Bieber said on the show. She was visibly joking yet Jennifer Aniston, 55, told the Wall Street Journal last year that she’s also used NAD+ IV drips, and Kourtney Kardashian, 45, calls her liquid form of NAD “the genetic key to longevity”.
The Sydney-based founders of UAre, an app designed to increase longevity, say that in the early years of testing, men and women responded differently to the product. “The conversation with men was more about winning,” says co-founder Marc Pasques. “‘I extended my lifespan by a year by doing more exercise’, or ‘I extended it by two’. Women talked about hanging out with grandkids.” But he goes on to admit that gap in motivation is closing.
UAre has just opened a $1 million seed round and forecasts $10 million in revenue in 2025 and $30 million in 2026. There’s money to be made in extending youth, if not eternal life. Bryan Johnson sells Blueprint basics for US$333 (around $495) a month. The Harvard biologist and author of Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don’t Have To, David Sinclair (chronologically 55; biologically 42), who controversially advocates for resveratrol—a plant compound found in red wine and grapes—as an anti-aging drug and who says there are no limits to how long we can live, has co-patented a skincare line with Caudalie.
Professional services giant PwC argues that the oft-used estimate of the global market value of longevity therapeutics at around $65 billion by 2030 does not take into account the potential for these to replace conventional therapeutics in healthcare. Australia’s first medical facility to offer personalised longevity programs, Longevity Medicine Institute, opened in Sydney’s Double Bay in July. “People are coordinating their aesthetic care with longevity doctors,” says New York-based celebrity cosmetic dermatologist Dr Paul Jarrod Frank, whose clients include Madonna. “They’re using supplements like NAD, newer peptides and various manipulative efforts to try and look younger and live longer.”
Similarly Don Saladino, the personal trainer who’s shaped up Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, emphasises age-extending practices in his star clients’ programs as strongly as any aesthetic goals. As Ryan Reynolds readied himself to assume a “tight-as-hell” costume for this year’s Marvel movie Deadpool & Wolverine, Saladino coached the 47-year-old through better sleep practices, walking and increasing dietary fibre. He reframes strength training as not just body-sculpting but as creating “body armour” for later life, to prevent the falls so catastrophic for the elderly.
And Chris Hemsworth, who plays another Marvel superhero Thor, included efforts to stave off the onset of dementia through meditation and exercise alongside Arctic ice plunges in his bid to increase longevity in the TV series Limitless.
The man who was Australia’s deputy chief medical officer during the Covid-19 pandemic questions the lure of many supplements and longevity interventions. As host of the 9Network’s Do you Want To Live Forever series, Dr Nick Coatsworth visits Okinawa, a “blue zone” where an astonishing number of inhabitants live past 100 in good health. There he watches some local elderly dance to hip-hop. “All that biohacking people do, it’s just a waste of time,” he says. “To live longer, you have to spend time with good friends, keep moving and have a good diet.”
Joel Pearson, who stopped taking resveratrol and NMN supplements years ago after research showed mixed results, agrees. “If there’s compelling evidence showing frequent sauna users can get a 40 per cent drop in all-cause mortality, then why would you spend time worrying about a molecule that has very small effect?”
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Breathing New Life
Ancient cultures have used it for thousands of years to cure anxiety and promote wellbeing; now everyone from CEOs to Olympians are discovering the health benefits of breathwork.
Rory Warnock is not your typical new-age guy. When we meet him, he’s sipping a negroni overlooking the ocean at Casa Amor in Saint-Tropez, dressed in an open-neck shirt, expensive sunglasses and a jaunty Hermès silk scarf tied around his neck; no kombucha teas or healing-crystal necklaces here. His relaxed posture is a far cry from 10 days ago when he was preparing to run a 200 km marathon through the Tian Shan mountain range in remotest Kyrgyzstan. “I carried everything I’d need for six days in the mountains. My pack weighed 10.8 kg on day one, excluding water. And I surprisingly ended up coming third,” he says.
According to Warnock, this staggering feat of endurance was mainly down to one thing: breathwork.
Proclaimed as an all-natural wonder drug by an ever-growing chorus of scientists, doctors and fitness enthusiasts, breathwork describes the act of inhaling and exhaling in a way that brings an overwhelming, sometimes euphoric, sense of calm and balance to your body. Though it dates back thousands of years—evidence has been found to suggest the practice was adpoted in ancient India, and shamanic cultures in South America, Africa and Australia—modern-day breathwork broadly falls into two different categories.
The first is the mindful breathing that forms an essential part of yoga and meditation: alternate nostril breathing, or box breathing, are taught as simple physiological tools to downregulate the nervous system and move the brain from fight or flight mode. It’s believed these simple methods re-tune brain chemistry, by reducing the amount of noradrenaline to the organ—akin to popping Valium or taking a perfectly safe mini-tranquiliser.
The second is holotropic breathing, which is deep, transformative breathwork. Devotees says it’s more like taking a mushroom trip. Pioneered by Dr Stanislav Grof in the ’70s, it invloves laying on your back in the dark and following a sequence of breathing patterns as you’re guided by a trained facilitator—and is often set to music. It’s claimed that this more intensive work can yield powerful results by connecting to the subconscious, releasing accumulated trauma and accessing inner wisdom.
Nine years ago, Scottish-born Warnock took a risk. He traded working for a successful packaged goods company in London for a career as a breathwork coach in Sydney—long before his passion was an internet buzzword. The move, however, was not necessarily driven by financial motives. “I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression at a pretty young age, like 21 or 22 years,” he says, taking another sip of his negroni. “I was pretty much crying myself to sleep for about three years and I didn’t really understand what was going on.”
Dissatisfied with being prescribed “a little white pill” by his doctor and given a “pat on the back”, Warnock began to look for new ways to heal his condition. “I tried to do everything I could to improve myself in a more holistic way and so I got into running,” he says. “I changed my lifestyle.”
And more significantly, he discovered breathwork, giving him a new mission in life. “When I first heard about it, I thought ‘breathwork’, that sounds a bit ridiculous. Someone is going to tell me how to breathe in a certain way and it is going to change how I think and feel and ultimately perform day-to-day? But I went along to one session and that one hour changed the direction of my whole life. I was hooked on the feeling. I was hooked on the immediate effects, hooked on feeling joyful, happy, strong, empowered.”
In person, Warnock’s enthusiasm is infectious, but his testimonials are, increasingly, backed up by science. A 2014 study by the Stanford Research Unit found breathing exercises to be effective for treating PTSD in combat veterans; and by 2016, US Navy seals started using breathwork to achieve calm and focus before battle. British neuroscientist Professor Ian Robertson calls it the “the most precise pharmaceutical you could ever give yourself, side-effect free”, while some researchers claim breathing exercises are an effective, low-cost treatment for PTSD, bi-polar, insomnia, and can even help combat grief.
The general public are buying into the movement, too; according to a report by the Global Wellness Institute, breathwork has experienced a 400 percent uptick in popularity since 2019. And, unsurprisingly, billionaire technology titans, who are always looking for the next big health panacea, are buying in. “It’s all very steeped in Silicon Valley tech culture,” said Jag Gill, a New York-based banker turned tech CEO in a recent interview with The Washington Post.
Dr Smita Dsilva is an ayurvedic doctor (ayurveda being an ancient Indian alternative medicine) at the RAKxa Integrative Wellness in Bangkok, Thailand, a clinic that received celebrity patronage in July when supermodel Kate Moss passed through. “Breathing exercises have been used for centuries as a powerful tool to manage stress and anxiety, increase focus, and improve overall wellbeing. In the high-pressure business world, this is a simple yet effective practice, she says. “Giving attention to the breath promotes the purification of both the mind and body, while also raising the energy. It also frees the mind from unnecessary thoughts that promote anxiety… regular practice can release up to 80 percent of the body’s toxins through the breath.”
And breathwork is not just an elixir for various negative mood states. According to Dsilva, the practise can also help with aesthetic issues: “Kapalbhati pranayama is a specific breathing technique in yoga that involves forceful exhalations and passive inhalations, engaging the abdominal muscles throughout the practice. The vigorous breathing and abdominal contractions help reduce bloating and support the removal of toxins, potentially leading to reduced belly bloating and weight loss.”
These findings will not be news to the clients who flock to Rory Warnock’s breathwork school in Sydney’s Bondi suburb. Or to the Olympic athletes, AFL players and CEOs who are huffing and puffing his studio door down on a regular basis. Most likely due to his soft Scottish accent and self-effacing manner, Rory has been adopted by a raft of high-calibre companies, including Google, Amazon, BUPA and Energy Australia, eager to learn how mindful breathing can bring better productivity to the workplace. He’s an ambassador for Apple and Lululemon, and has evolved into a seasoned conference speaker. Warnock’s brave career-change gamble has clearly paid off.
When he’s not teaching the world’s movers and shakers how to harness the power of something that we all do around 20,000 times a day without even thinking, Rory has gotten into the habit of bookending his year with long-distance races; for him, breathwork and ultra-marathon running are intimately linked. But he insists that mental issues can be addressed on a more prosaic level.
“You don’t have to go for a 45-minute yoga class or a run,” he insists. “You can just do a few minutes or even a few seconds of breathwork and you can move from a low state, to a better mood state. And it is exactly the same with anxiety; if you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, there are breathing exercises you can do in real time to shift how you feel.” Negronis are allowed, too.
Rory Warnock; and discover Warnock’s breath lessons on Spotify.
