THE DETAILS

Getting There South African Airways (flysaa.com) flies five times a week from Johannesburg to Vilankulo, from where you can either hop a boat or take a short Cessna flight to your resort island of choice. Where to Stay Anantara Bazaruto Island Resort 27-10/003-8979 ; bazaruto.anantara .com; from US$525 per person per night, all-inclusive. Azura Benguerra Island 27-11/467-0907; azura-retreats.com; from US$655 per person per night, all-inclusive. andBeyond Benguerra Island 27-11/809-4300; andbeyond.com; from US$765 per person per night, all-inclusive. Magaruque Island 27-83/625-3607; magaruqueisland .com; from US$395 per person per night, all-inclusive.

On my next catch, the line suddenly goes limp. I reel in a tuna that’s sawed almost in half by toothy serrations.

“Bull shark. Good thing you didn’t swim,” Conrad Oosthuizen, the Anantara’s South African activities manager, tells me later. Bull sharks, the hyenas of the sea, prowl the channel and sometimes follow the boats. “I’ve heard of a guy reaching into the water to rinse his hand and losing an arm,” he adds coolly.

This coastline may be magnificent and abundant, but in some ways it’s as fierce and formidable as the mainland. Tomorrow, I tell Oosthuizen, I plan to stick to the beach. Another Cessna hop brings me to Benguerra Island, a 55-square-kilometer wedge of sand situated midway between Magaruque and Bazaruto. About half the size of the latter, my final stop in the archipelago is home to two boutique resorts, one of which is run by the luxe safari operator andBeyond. I’m staying at the other, Azura, whose 18 seafront villas—each with its own pool—are purpose-built for a day of lounging. But Jayson Bamberger has other plans for me.

“We get all the reef fish of Southeast Asia here, but also pelagics: tuna, trevally, manta rays, whale sharks,” the resort’s dive master tells me as we motor out to sea. “We even see the occasional dugong.”

Sadly, no dugong shows for our dive on Two Mile Reef, a 22-meter-deep rib of rock off the east side of Benguerra. No bull shark either, happily. Instead, we find a stony spine festooned with hard and soft coral that’s brimming with rare creatures, including a pair of two-barred rabbitfish and several frogfish. Squadrons of devil rays prowl the sandy bottom, and we spot a handful of marine turtles, including a loggerhead. It’s some of the healthiest sea life I’ve seen this side of Micronesia, with wild colors and peculiar creatures you’d swear Dr. Seuss dreamed up.

Afterward, Bamberger buzzes me over to nearby Pansy Island, a sandbank off the south end of Bazaruto. At low tide, the beach here is flat and wide and as soft as powdered sugar. It squeaks underfoot with each step. Rose-hued pansies, or sand dollars, for which the place is named, are scattered around like doubloons washed up from a sunken treasure. I don’t think I’ve seen a more beautiful stretch of sand.

“It’s like this from Tanzania in the north down to the border with South Africa. And none of it is developed,” Bamberger says.

Mozambique’s challenge, I realize, isn’t about escaping its checkered past—it’s about embracing an ample and unknown future. Sure, there are bull sharks and cagey locals, a fledgling infrastructure and other travel complications. But while it’s possible for Mozambique to mitigate all those things, nowhere else in the world can replicate a place like Pansy Island—or the rest of the Bazaruto Archipelago for that matter.

It’s not quite that simple, of course. When it’s time to go, I consider pocketing one of the pansies as a souvenir, but Bamberger admonishes me. He reaches down for a sand dollar that’s already broken and, on picking it up, splits it in half with the nonchalance of snapping his fingers. Promise is as delicate as beauty, it seems. A fine, pink dust filters down from the pieces, but before it hits the beach, the wind sweeps up the falling remnants and carries them into the warm Indian Ocean.