Livingstone - Zambia

As the two countries meet at just one point the only border crossing between Botswana and Zambia is at Kazenguela a few miles from Kasane. We had been to Zambia before but this would be the first time we had driven ourselves so from here on in everything would be new to us.

To reach Zambia you cross the mighty Zambezi on a ferry. Now when I say ferry this not like the ones that criss cross the English channel but an aged pontoon capable of taking just one heavy truck plus two cars or four wheel drive vehicles and that's it. Pedestrians and people with bikes crowd on after the vehicles are loaded and stand along the sides or behind the vehicles, there is no cover against the elements.

The crossing takes less than 10 minutes but as there is only the one pontoon and usually lots of vehicles wishing to cross then massive queues can build up, sometimes stretching for miles.  We would be crossing on a Sunday when we hoped it would be quieter with less heavy goods vehicles.

There has been talk for many years of building a bridge but we heard Zambia being the poorer expects Botswana to foot the Lion's share of the costs and Botswana quite naturally is balking at this but sooner rather than later something needs to be done to ease this bottleneck.

One of the great attractions of Southern Africa is that none of the countries we had visited so far, namely RSA, Swaziland, Namibia or Botswana charged us for a visa or for taking Rupert in, however this was about to change big time as we entered Zambia and moved on into East Africa.

Normally you pay US$ 60 each for a Zambian visitors visa which   allows you to stay in the country for up to 30 days, however, you can avoid this fee if you pre-book your visit through a bona fide Zambian tour operator, hotel or lodge under something called a Fee Waiver Package. It must be booked before you enter the country and it is essential the hotel/lodge submits your names on their manifest and delivers this to the border post before you arrive, therefore you have to inform your hotel well in advance your travel dates and through which border post you will enter Zambia.

Before leaving Maun we had booked a two night waiver package over the Net with Jollyboys a backpackers hostel in Livingstone. Their price for two nights in an en suite room was US$ 50 per person which included the visa waiver, two meals each (breakfast, lunch or dinner) and a free beer at the bar each, so doing it this way is a no brainer really.

We arrived at the Botswana immigration and customs offices at 11am,  for the first time since arriving in Cape Town we had to get our Carnet stamped to show we were leaving the Southern Africa Common Customs Area so we were expecting this to take some time but we were all done with all the paperwork in just 10 minutes,  fantastic if only all other African countries where like this! 

Once we cleared immigration and customs we were allowed to drive the last 100 yards down to the river to board the pontoon.  As we pulled up at the waters edge we could see the pontoon was still on the Zambian side being loaded up so we stopped our engine and waited for it to come over. It looked like our decision to leave on a Sunday was paying off as we were the first in the queue, joined shortly afterwards by a heavy goods truck and then a few cars but generally it was very quiet. 

As we waited an old American guy from one of the cars came over for a chat, he was a  teacher at a small mission school in the copper belt and had lived in Zambia for over 50 years, so he knew Zambia well.  His first words were " I hope you filled up with fuel as it twice the cost in Zambia and there is also a shortage of Diesel over there at the moment".

We had tried to fill up before leaving Kasane but there had been such a huge queue at the only petrol station in town we had decided to press on. We knew there was another garage just before the border so we thought we would get fuel there, only when we got there we found it was out of Diesel, which explained the big queues in town, however rather than go back to town we decided to just push on for the border.

Luckily it wasn't a major problem as our main tank was half full and we had a full reserve plus two full jerry's on the roof so we had plenty to reach Livingstone. Rupert would be mothballed for the next month anyway but we just hoped the Diesel shortage was sorted by the time we got back from the UK.   

By now the pontoon was nearing our shore and the guys running it signalled to the driver of the truck to get ready to board first.  As we waited our turn a couple of street hustlers jumped off the pontoon to try to get us to change US Dollars or Botswana Pula for Zambian Kwacha.

To most people it is quite daunting when these guys surround you shouting and waiving wads of cash to get you to change money with them. They can become quite aggressive if you try and ignore them then but one things for sure even if you keep saying no politely they will continue to hassle you to the bitter end.

Their tactic is to intimidate you with all the shouting so you feel pressured and become confused, then they can try to bamboozle you with the exchange rates. Unless you know the rate well they will quite often try things like leaving out a decimal point, which is not as easy to pick up as it sounds especially when you are travelling through many borders where the rate goes up and down from hundreds to thousands of the local currency to the Dollar.

To be fair this was the first border so far that this had happened to us, Namibia and Swaziland accept South African Rands and Botswana to its credit just doesn't seem to have this sort of thing, but for the rest of East Africa you will nearly always experience this in some way or another so you need to learn how to deal with it.

First rule is don't lose your cool, just joke along with them and if you want to change money pick out one guy who looks ok and tell him you will not deal unless the others go away and leave you and him alone. They are usually all in it together so they should go along with this, if they don't then don't deal.

As it is you cannot buy Kwacha outside of Zambia so we did need to get some cash but as we were about to board the pontoon we decided if we could avoid it we wouldn't change money until we reached Livingstone, however little did we know what was to come.

The short journey across the Zambezi is lovely and it must be said one of the few borders in the world were you can see Hippos and Elephants as you cross over. As we cruised across I  chatted to the driver of the truck who was a Ndebele from Zimbabwe but with all the problems had fled to Botswana and was now working there but he frequently hauled goods to and from Zambia.

Once we  reached Zambia we needed to get some third party car insurance before heading off to Livingstone,  if we didn't and hit a police roadblock (of which there are many in Zambia) we risked being hit for a serious fine not to mention a load of hassle. Up to now we hadn't needed to worry about this as in the South third party insurance is included in the fuel price but from here on this issue would become a bit of a thorn in our side. The truck driver knew an insurance agent at the border who was straight enough so he promised to take us to him once we cleared immigration.

As soon as you drive off the pontoon onto Zambian soil you are in a quite different Africa to what you have been used to further south. Pulling up at immigration we were immediately beset by a veritable army of touts and hustlers. The contrast with Botswana is quite startling, Zambia has a huge population compared to Botswana 's and is so much poorer that being hassled for money and food is much more in your face.

To our surprise immigration went well, after checking us off against Jollyboys manifest they issued us with a 14 day visa without any quibbles. This is the most they will give you on a waiver so if you need to stay longer you will have to go to a local immigration office to get it extended. We were told by Jollyboys this is simple to do and is free of charge but as it was it didn't matter to us this time as we would be flying back to the UK in a few days anyway but we would have to put it to the test once we came back in August so we hoped they were right, more on this later.

After immigration came customs where we had to get our Carnet stamped for entry into Zambia. South Africa, Swaziland, Namibia and Botswana are all part of the Southern Africa common customs area (SADCC) so we hadn't needed to get the carnet stamped since we arrived at Cape Town back in December so we were a bit apprehensive on how this would be handled by the Zambian authorities. 

Sure enough this was where the fun started, before Customs would stamp the Carnet we had to pay some taxes (here we go), plus show them the receipt that we had paid the pontoon fee and had bought our third party car insurance.

By now the truck driver was anxious to get away so we decided to sort out the insurance first. Running a gauntlet of touts and hawkers we followed him on foot through a small shanty town area to a wooden hut. It didn't look too promising but on the door was a sign saying Manica,  we knew Manica from our time in the Middle East and knew they were a reputable company so this was a little re-assuring. After a bit of negotiation we ended up paying USD 45 for three months cover which we found out later was about right.

Thanking the truck driver for his help we headed back to pay the pontoon fee and the mysterious taxes. First off was the pontoon which for foreign registered cars costs  USD 20  per vehicle,  like the insurance they will only accept US dollars or another hard currency. It was beginning to look like our decision to fly back from Livingstone was going to be an expensive exercise.

Now for the taxes, the first one we were told was something called the Carbon Tax and we would have to go the other side of customs to pay this. After some searching we finally found the right office but it was empty and there was no one around to ask.

After waiting for a while we decided to go off and pay the other tax and come back later. The other tax was intriguingly called  the "Council Tax", which we thought we had left behind in the UK! This was paid in another hut across the compound but at least this time there was someone on hand to take our cash.  Actually the young guy was very polite and helpful and even seemed a little embarrassed about charging us for this, he told us the money goes to the local council but for what we never found out however, as it was the equivalent of £1 we didn't mind, normally you pay this in Kwacha but when we explained we didn't have any he was happy to take 10 Botswana Pula instead.

Great, now all we needed was to return to the other office, pay the Carbon Tax and get the hell out of here. Returning to the payment office we found it's occupant had finally returned, but in contrast to the last guy this bloke was truculent and none too friendly. This tax he said helped to protect the Zambian environment and is a sliding scale based on the size of your car's engine which seemed fair enough. We told him we had a Landrover and after consulting some papers he came up with an outlandish demand for hundreds of thousands of Kwacha which I quickly worked out was over a USD 100! This couldn't be right, but he wouldn't show us the sliding scale and was insistent that a Landrover is a "big strong car" which must have a "big engine" at least four litre's.

Our Carnet was still with the customs officers so we couldn't produce that to show him Rupert's engine is actually just 2495 CC. However, before leaving the UK we had taken the precaution of also buying from the RAC a motor certificate which had all of Rupert's details on it so after suspiciously eyeing this up and down for about 10 minutes he rather reluctantly relented and reduced the Kwacha amount drastically to about USD 45, even this seemed exorbitant but by now we had nearly lost the will to live so just wanted to get done and get on the road ASAP.

However, the guy wasn't quite done with us just yet, I offered him the dollars but to our great surprise he insisted we pay in Kwacha. Now this is almost unheard of out here but he said he could not accept foreign currency and we must go change some money. Shit, we had never imagined we would not be able to pay in dollars as every country out here is eager for them. We now needed to get about 180,000 Kwacha, the money hustlers were just going to love us! 

Rather then enter into a bun fight with the street guys we decided to go back to the helpful guy in the council tax hut to see if he could change some money for us. Unfortunately he didn't have enough Kwacha but he shot out and came back with a guy who he vouched was honest, at least we only had to deal with the one guy so in a second we had changed $60 for a huge wad of Kwacha and headed back to pay the nice Mr Carbon Tax guy.

When we got there we found a load of South Africans in the midst of the same argument over how much they were being charged for their vehicles. Smiling wryly we just handed over our wad got our receipt and got the hell out of there, some things you have to let go and we needed to get our Carnet stamped. The whole process had taken over an hour to sort out but at least now we were through and as we were let through the barrier and headed up the road to Livingstone we realised suddenly that at last we were in Central Africa.

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