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Life on a beautiful island known for its beaches, palm trees, and burgeoning expat population.

Sounds idyllic, right?

Mauritius has become a bit of a buzzword for South Africans looking abroad, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the country’s borders opening to South Africans who are fully vaccinated as of October 1, the number of people making use of residency-by-investment programmes is expected to surge.

Consider this, via BusinessTech:

Mauritius offers a Residency-by-Investment opportunity when purchasing property at $375,000 or more, and there are no visitation requirements nor language tests.

You, your spouse and children under 24 achieve permanent residency status, and in addition, you can also bring your parents with you as dependents, thereby enabling three generations to reside in Mauritius should you wish…

The island lifestyle, excellent infrastructure, including a good education, healthcare and a robust financial system along with attractive tax benefits including a flat rate of 15% (individuals and corporates) are part of the attraction for foreign buyers and investors…

Fork out roughly R5,5 million on a property, and you’re basically in.

South Africans are behind only France in terms of foreigners buying property, so there’s certainly a growing expat population on the island.

Seth decided to do some Googling around and found a few blogs speaking with expats who now call Mauritius home.

Bronwyn Corbett, who relocated from South Africa in 2017, told her story to Wanted Online in 2019. Here’s what she had to say about the downsides:

…because it’s an island, everything is imported and, therefore, choice is limited. It’s not as easy as popping into your local pharmacy or grocer to pick up your favourite moisturiser or ingredients for the evening dinner.

Luckily, friends and family often come to visit and get lists of what they need to bring.

There’s also the fact that living costs are far higher than in South Africa:

One pays about 30% more for usual groceries and household items. School fees at an international school are about double those in South Africa. But the quality of schooling is excellent, with an emphasis on parental involvement…

Eating out is also expensive compared to South Africa, unless you know where the locals eat. Dinner for two in a nice restaurant will cost about 3 500 rupees (R1,484), with about half of that going towards the bottle of wine.

Again, those are 2019 prices.

Last month, Spend Life Travelling spoke with Julz, an expat in Mauritius, as part of their ‘Ask an Expat’ series.

She likes most things about Mauritius, but had a familiar complaint:

“Traffic can be tough.

But that is only a problem if you drive daily on the island. The roads aren’t great and because of that it takes a lot of time to get from one place to another.”

Maybe some will find it reassuring that even when moving to Mauritius, you can still gather at a dinner party moan about the traffic with people you barely know.

Julz offered two tips for those moving to the country:

Live close to your workplace / your child’s school

Even if it is cheaper to choose a house a little further out, 2-3km in the morning can easily add an extra 15min to your commute. In the beginning you won’t mind, but after you have settled in you will want to move!

Choose to live in a complex

Security is no more of an issue here than anywhere else in the world, but it is just better in my opinion. And, it is often also easier to meet locals and other expats here.”

There you have it.

You’ll need to cough up a decent chunk of change to make use of those residency-by-investment programmes, and then there are the higher living costs.

If you’re one of those leaving, just try not to be one of those expats that gets a thrill out of trash talking South Africa at every opportunity

We get it, you emigrated. Leave the real moaning to those of us who still live here, and trust that we have it covered.

[sources:bustech&wantedonline&slt]