On July 16th we departed Chobe Marina Lodge and headed to the Kazungula border where the Zambezi River separates Botswana from Zambia.
The crossing between Botswana and Zambia was at one time notorious for the time it could take to cross, especially if you had a rented vehicle.
It was chaos in the customs building and it could take two or more hours to clear customs, but you couldn’t help but feel sorry for the drivers of the semi-trailers that lined the road for literally kilometres before reaching the edge of the Zambezi River, where two barges operated to ferry two to three semis per crossing, plus maybe one or two cars. It was nuts, and we were told it could take over a week for the semis to finally cross into Zambia.
Well, a new bridge and customs facilities were built and there were no road signs pointing the way to the border crossing. We couldn’t believe that this beautiful new bridge didn’t have good signage. We weren’t sure if we were going the right way and our Garmin GPS pointed us to a turn I didn’t think we should take and fortunately I was right but there were still no signs!
We made it to customs around 8:50 am.
We withdrew some Zambian Kwacha from an ATM near to where we parked (we knew we needed Kwacha for our excess vehicle insurance purchase) and proceeded into a brand new “ORGANIZED” customs terminal.
We were pretty well the only people in the facility, and the Botswana customs exit, Zambia customs entry, TIP (Temporary Import Permit for vehicles) process, carbon tax, road tolls, etc., took a grand total of about 1 hour. We were so happy because typically it can take over two hours. Being there early helped. If the area was busy, we could see that the process could still take a couple of hours, as there would be long lineups at each process counter. Free and clear, we made our way to Livingstone, about a 50-minute drive away.
We booked one night at Fawlty Towers Hotel in central Livingstone. However, our Garmin GPS didn’t have the hotel in its database, and we hadn’t yet purchased a SIM card for Zambia, so we couldn’t use Google Maps.
We weren’t sure where the place was located, so we pulled into a Shoprite parking lot to get our bearings and ask for directions.
We hopped out of the truck, had a good stretch, looked across the road and, lo and behold, Fawlty Towers!
What a perfect location.
After check-in, Kristina and Lucy headed out on a private tour to Victoria Falls while we hunted down a SIM card.
We had success with getting a SIM card, and the girls had a great two-hour tour of the falls.
We decided to break up our shopping into two trips. In the late afternoon we walked across the street to Shoprite and picked up everything we needed except water, meats, bakery, booze and ice. The heavy stuff and the essential stuff.
Everything was strategically packed into the truck, and we again walked back across the street for dinner at the Hungry Lion, a KFC-style fast-food chicken place with very good chicken and extremely good prices.
Bedtime was early, and the next morning we had our breakfast, checked out at 8:00 am and did our final shop at Shoprite to get ice, meat, water, booze and bread, then headed out on our journey north to Kafue National Park.