There are no dead-end trails in the Kruger National Park, one of the largest game reserves in Africa. They are all interconnected or circular. Can you guess why?
I learned the answer the hard way in 1986. It was my first gaming trip. I went with a college classmate to Etosha Pan in the extreme north of Southwest Africa (now Namibia). There was a waterhole just off the main track so we decided to check it out in hopes of seeing some lions.
After a few minutes, we heard the characteristic snort and nod of an elephant. Behind us, on the only dirt track, was a teenage bull. He was clearly in a musth state, a kind of adolescent explosion of elephant hormones, and therefore extremely dangerous. His distinctive side-to-side head movement pointed to an unhappy elephant.
Elephants are much faster than most people think – time to move. He had kept the engine running, but our backs were to the junction of the waterhole side track and the main track. I slowly walked away from the big guy and rounded a tight corner … only to find myself facing a wall of impenetrable bushes.
Lesson: Always have an escape route in the bush.
In this case, we were lucky. After a tense 10 minutes during which the young bull circled the track, he finally made his way to the waterhole to splash some mud on his back and keep mosquitoes at bay.
I slowly emerged from the cul-de-sac, my heart pounding and sweat falling from my forehead. We went up the main trail until we found a “bush toilet”, a fenced-in area where you can do your business without becoming someone’s food. We took a good breath while he absorbed the lesson.
During my recent visit to the Kruger National Park, I displayed the sense of the jungle that I had accumulated in 25 years of African life and saw a lot of wildlife for sure. After all, this time he had a wife, a son, and two in-laws in the Range Rover. I am no longer a carefree college boy.
You can probably guess where I’m going with this. Life is full of dead ends. They are not risky in and of themselves … but they can quickly become a trap. You can learn the hard way or find someone who has already.
Overconcentration of one’s own investments in an asset class is a dead end. Diversity is your escape route. The same is true of geographic concentration. Smart traders have multiple currencies, for example, sacrificing some growth to protect against the unknown.
The offshore back door
But my favorite topic is life on the high seas. After all, I have done it for much of my life.
Now, from time to time I receive letters questioning my patriotism for criticizing the United States government and encouraging people to explore opportunities abroad.
Those lyrics don’t upset me one bit. I am a bit proud of them. America was designed to serve me needs as a free citizen with “obvious” natural rights. The United States government earns my respect precisely to the extent that it does. When it doesn’t, one of my natural rights is to search another part of the planet.
That is not unpatriotic … it is true freedom. It is also one of the most liberating back doors I know of. The feeling of having a second home … a place to go to “cool off” or even escape … that’s what I call freedom.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the South Atlantic …
Creating a personal escape route from potential dead ends is not as difficult as it sounds.
For example, next March I will be visiting Punta del Este, Uruguay. This week I am in Cape Town, where I have a second home. It is almost exactly at the same latitude as Punta del Este. If I look west from the other side of the Cape Peninsula (my house is on the east side), I am looking directly at it.
Perhaps that is why I always feel at home there in March, when the southern hemisphere summer ends and the ocean breezes begin to move north, just as they do at Cape Fairest.
I took advantage of Uruguay’s opportunity a few years ago for a reason: it is the only country on the planet that guarantees foreigners the right to obtain legal residence and citizenship. That, and the fact that the country is the most advanced in Latin America … worlds ahead of most of Central America and better than the United States in many ways. There are conditions, of course, but they are simple and inexpensive.
I would not go so far as to say that life in one country is as dangerous a cul-de-sac as my journey through the water hole in Namibia. But again, you never know what’s sneaking up behind you.