Why More South Africans are Relocating to Mauritius and Taking Their Pets With Them 🐶🐱🇲🇺🐹🐰

With its stable, competitive economy and its reputation as the safest country in Africa, Mauritius is attracting an increasing number of South Africans to its sunny shores. In a recent MoneyWeb interview, Dani van Vuuren of the Sovereign Group told interviewer Simon Brown that Mauritius, as both a business and a retirement destiny, was flourishing.

And there are other reasons to move there, too. According to its article Moving to Mauritius? Here’s Everything You Need to Know by InterNations, the world’s largest ex-pat community, Mauritius is an attractive career choice for ex-pats; its official language is English (for legal documents); and it has a temperate climate with winter daytime lows seldom dropping below a balmy 20°C.

Mauritius also has a fascinating and diverse culture, dating back to the 16th century, when it was a seaport, and through the ages, until it achieved its independence in 1968. And it has a varied, colourful population, with French and Mauritian Creole widely spoken. (French language courses are widely available.)

For the adventurous, there’s a lot to do, from every kind of water sport to exploring the many uninhabited islets and their nature reserves dotted around mainland Mauritius.

A rare event in South Africa, cyclones happen from time to time in Mauritius: local guidelines encourage residents to keep emergency kits in their homes, and to keep their tree branches trimmed to reduce damage to property during a storm. There are also warning systems in place to communicate storm forecasts. “While it is rare for the centre of the cyclone to pass directly over Mauritius – on average only once every five years –distant cyclones can still affect the island, with between 3-5 cyclonic storms per year,” says InterNations, adding: “Occasionally, schools may be closed, and travel disrupted if storms cause flooding.”