Sunday, August 3, 2008

Africa Border Crossing

I'm sure many of you have crossed borders between countries before, but until you've crossed an Africa bush crossing, you've missed out. When returning from Botswana, we went to a 'bush crossing', it really was in the middle of nowhere. Getting into Zimbabwe was easy but took forever. Both Anne and I had to buy visas again, so they made us wait about 20 minutes, so they could process everyone else. When we finally made it in there, we got our visas, by this time there were more people lined up behind us. So, he made us wait again to get our receipts. We were sent off to customs to make out our claims for goods that we were bringing in. On my claim, I had food and electrical listed. The customs agent asked me what electrical I had, I said a solar panel and some welding rods. His response was, 'what's a tourist doing with a solar panel and welding rods', it was a good question. Dawn Disney, the hospital Bursar was there to assist me in saying that I bought them for the hospital, which in itself is also 'illegal'. You're not supposed to purchase for other people. The Customs guy was great, he just jokingly said, "I caught you". Then we had to go back in line at Immigration to get our receipt. All of this took place in a little shack that was seperated by a door with a string across to differentiate between Customs and Immigration. The whole thing took about 90 minutes. I love traveling... African style.

My internet time is running out.... sorry if there are spelling mistakes........

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well said.