Friday, July 22, 2011

Border Crossings

The one thing I didn't mention in the entry on the Zambezi Queen was the excessive boarder crossings. In the past week, we have been through some sort of immigration process about 12 times! The boat was situated on the river between Botswana and Namibia. We were picked up in Botswana, but since the boat headquarters are in Namibia we had to get stamped into and out of there as well.

We got to the Immigration office in Kasane, Botswana and I could not believe how small it was. It was very different than the US. Botswana immigration was a palace compared to Namibia immigration. We left the dock at Kasane by small motor boat and pulled up to a sandy shore. We hiked up a sandy hill to a little hut. It basically had four walls, a roof, a desk, and some files. That was Namibia Immigration office. There were no lights and no phones. Just a guy sitting behind a desk with a stamp. 

The day we exited the boat we had to go out through Namibia, into Botswana, out of Botswana and into Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe border had trucks waiting to get across the border. We were told that the wait time and process for the truck would take a week! 

Today, we left Zimbabwe, entered Zambia, left Zambia, and entered South Africa. In this trip, I have been through immigrations more times than I have been total in my life.  

No comments:

Post a Comment