Dad had to get going pretty early today because of a meeting at the Royal Livingston before picking up his car and driving the six hours back to Lusaka. I woke up and got dressed immediately to take him over in our car. Dan had to stay behind because we didn't want to buy him another visa into Zambia just for a few hours, and also because he was on the last of the double entry visa into Zimbabwe, so we would have had to buy him another one of those too. They really make African travel for Americans very tedious and expensive. Dad, mum and I all piled into the land rover with dads bag and our laundry. Leaving Zimbabwe was relatively painless, as they never seem to care when you leave a country, only when you enter it. No one even took the TIP(temporary import permit) off us!
On the Zambian side things took a little more time but ran smoothly too. I had to be carted off to the back to explain why I was entering the country to a lovely lady called Cynthia, and she allowed us to get a CIP(customs import permit) that we could keep past our return to Zimbabwe today as long as we told the lady on the desk about it when we came back thigh the same border post after dropping dad off. While I was getting the document printed dad had to go and shout at one of the runners to get off our car, as he was lounging against the bonnet as though it was his car! Dad went to sort out the insurance and gate clearance and jumped into our waiting car to pass through the gate when he was done.
The drive to the hotel was extremely short and we passed all the luggage to dads car before saying goodbye till Sunday and heading back to the border posts. Again leaving Zambia wasn't a hassle because no me cares when you are leaving the country. There was a man waiting at the immigration desk who told us that the lady behind the desk was very busy so we should just tell the guard that and go without a stamp. Mum and I were very happy to take his suggestion! When arriving at the gates one man came up to me and tried to sign off, i.e. invalidate, my road toll paper that cost us $48 at the horrific border on Sunday. I managed to convince him that he wasn't to sign it as we needed it in a few days and someone inside had said it was no problem to keep it.
The actual gate guard was much harder to convince that we should be let through without the second stamp, but because we literally had every piece of paper under the sun pertaining to the car and taxes and customs rubbish, he eventually relented and let us through, hurray!!! On the Zimbabwe side we had to lay another $10 road access fee, even though we had paid for one on Sunday and had only been gone for an hour, if that. The men at the gates signed off on it and my TIP and let us through after peering into the car to see if we had any luggage. Probably to look through and make our lives difficult, but thankfully we had given it all to dad! :)
The drive across the bridge in between the two borders was as spectacular as usual, and made me even more excited for the helicopter ride we are going to have in a few days! When we got back home we all had sandwiches for lunch and settled down to read and snooze for the rest of the afternoon. We were visited halfway through the day by a family of warthogs, who had four tiny babies with them!! December is the start of the rainy season and as such most of the species babies are born around this time, because it is the time of the most plentiful food for the animals. They were so adorable, and came quite close to us, the mum on,y warned us off once (we hadn't moved from the porch) so they ate obviously very used to people. Dan started the fire up for a braai around 6 and we started cooking our steaks, marinated in mums delicious home made marinade at 7pm. Tonight we cooked some potatoes on the braai to enjoy with the steaks, as well as salad :) After enjoying our dinner and chatting outside for a long while we all closed up the canvas walls, locked the door and went to bed :)
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