Nothing says you’re travelling overseas greater than having to have a look at your passport and, particularly after the Covid-enforced two-year grounding, my pleasure was operating excessive just a few months in the past after I started planning a visit to Zimbabwe.
It’s been many years – effectively, not likely however extra of which later – since I final visited our northern neighbour and I used to be actually wanting ahead to a fortnight sojourn in Victoria Falls, Harare, Hwange and Kariba… particularly since I’d be seeing some old nature conservation mates as effectively.
I used to be horrified when the journey agent arranging my flights known as again and advised me my passport was expiring in lower than three months. As a consequence, she stated, there was no method the Zimbabwean authorities would permit me to set foot of their nation.
The course of of buying a brand new passport from the Department of Home Affairs turned comparatively painless after I submitted an on-line software and concluded the biometric exams by means of my financial institution (though this entailed driving a number of occasions to Cape Town from Stellenbosch).
The draw back was that I had to hand in my old passport earlier than I may get the brand new one. I don’t learn about you however I look on a passport of one thing of a journey journal: It doesn’t take lengthy for me to begin reliving my journeys after I begin paging by means of and finding out the customarily smudged “chops” from varied nations. Just wanting on the varied visas transports me instantly again to days of anxiousness and, in the end, aid.
There was the time after I was headed to Morocco to do a “recce” for a serious tv information manufacturing; the issue being that Rabat and Pretoria weren’t on excellent talking phrases.
The visa facilitation agent – it’s value paying the charge, imagine me! – met me on the escalators with my appropriately stamped passport at OR Tambo as I used to be heading to the check-in desk for the primary leg of the journey… a flight to Malaga in Spain.
I stepped off the ferry between Europe and Africa in Tangiers at midnight the subsequent night time.
Shengen visas (visits to Europe) turned a cinch after I realized to apply by means of the Portuguese consulate in Cape Town – however journeys involving Britain have been nerve-wracking even when it entailed solely touching down in London for a connecting flight.
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You had to wait on your passport to come again from no matter consulate or embassy was contemplating your software to journey earlier than you may submit it to the British Foreign Office for his or her pricey and time-consuming “stamp of approval”.
On one other observe, I used to be on my method by means of Heathrow to catch a flight to Edinburgh the place I used to be due to meet up with associates to watch the Springboks play Scotland at Murrayfield.
The customs official noticed my green-and gold high and stated: “Bet you’ve got loads of biltong in your bags.”
I advised him I hadn’t since bringing it by means of customs was unlawful and would, at greatest, merely be confiscated. He dropped a sly wink and waved me by means of. I hadn’t been mendacity although… no biltong however about 10kg of boerewors for my homesick friends.
I used to be masking the Mapungubwe Wild Run between South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana, and the athletes’ camp was on the northern financial institution of the Limpopo River.
Every time I and so they crossed the river (or the Shashe between Zim and Botswana) we’d be stopped by customs officers sitting behind a metallic desk below the tree and be made to current our journey paperwork.
It was all fairly enjoyable and so they received into the spirit of issues by becoming a member of us for dinner and drinks each night earlier than weaving into the bush of their authorities Land Rovers.
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