It has to be one of the longest border crossings I have ever experienced, besides the China-Kazakhstan one. This time, I took an overnight bus from Johannesburg as we headed up north to Beit Bridge to cross the border. Many of my friends had warned me about the horrendous queues, but in order to save money, crossing the overland border was still cheaper than flying. We reached the South Africa border around 4am, and groggily made our way to the snaking queue. We literally witnessed the sun rise at the border due to the slow processing. Apparently I heard that the South African custom officials were on strike due to some pay raise issues, so they took their own sweet time to stamp out the passports. I saw some of them even playing with their phones and seemed unbothered by the long queues. Moreover, it was the holiday season, so many Zims working in South Africa were making their way back home. After 3 hours I finally managed to get my South Africa exit stamp.

Then, it came to the Zimbabwean side which was another long wait. What a “warm” welcome to Zimbabwe as we had to queue for 3.5 hours under the hot sun. There was misleading instructions about where to go, the immigration booth we were directed to turned out to be only for Zimbabweans, the guy at the visa counter who had to check if I needed a visa to enter Zim. People shoving and pushing to get into the immigration office, while other tourists queued patiently for their vehicle registration to be processed. Then the baggage check where they searched through every single passenger’s belongings manually (what happened to the scanning machine?) before letting us pass. What a mess and a lengthy immigration process of 7 hours for both South African and Zimbabwean sides but I’m glad I made it to country#69!!