ED’S LETTER

DON’T MISS OUR NEXT ISSUE! The February/March issue will be on sale at your local retailer from 28 January 2022.

YN NEL STE RO

Sun, sea, and good tidings

Friends of mine recently hiked one of the six legs of the Kruger Trail. Each leg is roughly 100 km in length – an unsupported, week-long walk through a truly primitive wilderness. It’s just you and your companions, surrounded by wild animals, making your way (carefully!) through the veld day by day.

This remarkable trail, which now looms large on my to-do list, made me think of how humans managed to become the dominant species on earth. We’re not as strong as a lion, fast as a cheetah or big as an elephant, and our ability to work together is not unique: ants, bees, wild dogs and even baboons do this quite effectively.

Many good books have been written on the topic, and the consensus is that it was our unique ability to use language that gave us the edge – not only to warn about potential dangers, but also to explore future opportunities. Language, and especially the way we use it to tell stories, made it possible for us to co-operate with each other, and with complete strangers far away. Stories inspire people to be adaptable; to attempt things they could not even dream about.

For the magazine, this adaptability and faith in stories promising better times ahead have carried us to where we are now – into a season of well-deserved rest and new beginnings. For us, a summer holiday is synonymous with sand, sea and sunscreen, which is why our focus in this issue is on great escapes along the Wild and West coasts.

Our wish is that great travel stories will continue to inspire you in 2022, not just to explore new places, but to treat your family, friends and strangers with love and respect. Good tidings to all!

PIE PI RRE STEYN PSteyn@media24.com

BEHIND THE SCENES

Photographer, writer and our very own map maker, François Haasbroek has been a part of the team for 11 years. During that time, he has had more car drama on assignment than all the other writers combined. His trip to the Wild Coast (p 40) was no exception…

What’s your tally? Off the top of my head, I can think of 13 incidents, ranging from getting stuck on a muddy road in the Kruger Park for two hours, surrounded by elephants, to filling a diesel car with petrol in Bitterfontein.

Scariest incident? In 2011, I was driving a Suzuki Jimny on a farm near Patensie in the Eastern Cape after heavy rain. At one point, the road simply gave way beneath me, causing the vehicle to roll and end up on its roof. Luckily I wasn’t going very fast – the farmers don’t like it when you drive more than 20 km/h near their orange orchards – and I escaped without serious injury.

And the funniest? It’s never funny while it’s happening, but afterwards I can usually find something to smile about. Like the time the magazine’s old Toyota Condor broke down in a parking lot in Nelspruit on New Year’s Eve in a deluge. I was stranded in Nelspruit for three days without a vehicle. In the end, a mechanic repaired the Condor with a hairdryer and some new wire insulation.

What happened on the Wild Coast? In Dwesa Nature Reserve, there’s is a sign that indicates a road to the Kobole estuary. I was curious and took the turn-off. I was in a two-wheel-drive Mahindra Scorpio SUV with decent ground clearance. I thought I’d be fine. The road goes through a forest and down a steep hill to the river, where it comes to a dead end against the beach – with nowhere to turn around! I tried to reverse up the hill, but it was too steep and wet.

The only solution was to turn around on the sand. I got stuck, of course.

After struggling for a while, I abandoned the vehicle and walked down the coast to find cellphone signal. I called the park office in East London and they sent someone stationed at the park gate to help me. I found out later that if I’d left the Scorpio there for an hour or two longer, the tide would have taken it…

Do people help you when you’re stranded? Even in the middle of nowhere, a Good Samaritan usually pulls over to help. (Except that one farmer north of Noenieput who just drove right past me…) I’ve been helped by an aircraft mechanic from Betta in Namibia, fishermen from Hondeklip Bay and gospel singers from Philandersbron.

What do you never leave home without? My crate of essentials: spade, tyre pressure gauge and air compressor.

LET YOUR MONEY TRAVEL FOR YOU

Learn how to invest offshore with Old Mutual Investment Group and let your money take you places.

“You may not be able to travel, but your money can,” says Gontse Tsatsi, Head of Retail Client Management at Old Mutual

Investment Group. While Covid-19 restricted global travel and kept South Africans at home, local and offshore investments delivered an impressive performance over the past year. Investing offshore is an important component of most investors’ portfolios, and it can be quite simple to do.

Amidst the economic uncertainty produced by the pandemic, unit trust investors benefitted from the post-lockdown market rallies across the world and could continue to do so on the back of the recovering global economy. But if you’re thinking of investing offshore, there is more than one way …

THE EXPENSIVE WAY

You could physically move money out of South Africa by converting rands to a foreign currency and reinvesting it in an international market. This process tends to be more appropriate for wealthy investors since the minimum amounts required to do so are relatively high. These individuals can deal with the complexity of repatriating their funds and can afford the higher minimum investment amounts required, which – understandably – most investors cannot.

THE SIMPLE WAY

Enter unit trusts – the best way to own a piece of the world and diversify risk cheaply. From as little as R500 a month, you can let your money go globe-trotting. Local unit trusts that invest globally offer investors simplicity, a wide choice of asset classes and flexibility without worrying about getting a tax clearance certificate from SARS.

Investing in a locally registered unit trust with exposure to offshore assets mitigates many of the complexities of offshore investing – like regulation, differing terminology, and the sheer magnitude of options.

Doing so helps investors reduce investment risk by diversifying and possibly beating inflation through the exposure to global growth assets.

BE WISE WITH TAX

Investors can benefit further by using their tax-free investment allowance through a tax-free unit trust with global exposure. This means that when investing through a tax-free unit trust, investors will pay no tax on any interest earned, no tax on dividends and no capital gains tax up to a maximum total investment of R35 000 per annum. This is a great incentive for investors with a long-term investment horizon, including first-time investors.

FIND A BALANCE

While offshore markets have staged impressive performance to date, there is no guarantee that this will continue. Investing in growth assets like shares in local or global markets is, however, a long-term proposition. It is therefore important for investors to consider an appropriate offshore component as part of an overall, well-diversified investment portfolio for long-term investing.

For more details, go to www.oldmutualinvest.com/offshore.