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WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF ZIMBABWE, BUT WE FACE A NEW CHALLENGE | Snow & Curt | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF ZIMBABWE, BUT WE FACE A NEW CHALLENGE
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The content details a significant shift in a travel plan for East Africa due to the harsh realities encountered in Zimbabwe, leading to a revised, more immediate goal of reaching Mozambique for a period of regrouping and reassessment.
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In our last video, we made big and drastic changes to our plan for East Africa. And
that video ended kind of abruptly without a lot of explanation. So, we feel like we
owe you a little bit of that. But first, I want to tell you what the original plan was.
We were leaving South Africa crossing into Zimbabwe where we were going to see some world
famous ruins that were basically the heart of the country of Zimbabwe dating back in hundreds
and hundreds of years. Then we were going to cross over into Batswana where of course we
were going to see all kinds of stuff. But the main highlight for us was going to be a safari
out to see the mircats which are some of the cutest little creatures on earth. I think then
we were going to cross into Zambia where we were going to see one of the world's greatest natural
occurrences. A huge dramatic beautiful waterfall, Victoria Falls. We would have crossed back into
Zimbabwe so we could have seen that beautiful waterfall from both sides. Then we were going
to take a ferry ride along a river there in Zambia, driving our way up towards Tanzania
where we would have been back in famous safari land, the Serengeti where the great migration
takes place and we were hoping to see thousands of baby wilderbeasts and then Mount Kilimanjara, one
of the most famous mountain peaks in the world. As we crossed our way up into Rwanda and Uganda,
where the highlight would have been the mountain gorillas, the only place on earth you can see them
and a huge bucket list for me. Then we would have gone into Kenya where the cities are supposed to
be diverse and developed and uh the the tribal stuff out in the rural areas is supposed to be
amazing and more safaris. And then we would have crossed back through Tanzania to get to Malawi
where there is a beautiful long lake that you can drive along that's nestled down in the mountains.
It's supposed to have just a cool relaxed vibe as you drive along and enjoy the scenery. And then we
would have crossed into Mosmb beek where we would have worked our way over to the beaches for a real
little relaxation before crossing back into South Africa sometime maybe six or seven months from
now and then start sorting out the logistics of shipping the van to our next destination.
But our first 24 hours in Zimbabwe was a harsh reality that we're just not quite ready. I don't
think we ever will be ready again for such a uh such an adventure. If you follow our journey,
you've heard me say that the journey down through West Africa took a little
bit of adventure out of my heart. And it did. And I had hoped it would come back.
But the border crossing into Zimbabwe was stressful and hard. It took several hours.
And just knowing how many of those type of border crossings were ahead of us started to weigh on us.
And then the roads, the roads, and it's not the country's fault there. There's finances,
economy, there's corruption in the governments, but that's just the way it is in most of these
African countries through here. And when you travel through the rural parts of these countries,
it's even worse. So, it's not just that it's a bumpy road. All the stuff that comes with
bad roads is the wear and tear on the van. Every little creek that you hear, every little squeak or
noise, your whole body tenses up and you're like, "Did that pothole just break something in our,
you know, our shock system or are we stranded out here again?" And it's just a fear that'll
be with us forever. The mental toughness that it takes to drive on these roads is hard to explain.
And you can see Kurt over there right now. He's concentrating. You never know where the pothole
is going to be, where the bump's going to be, where the goat's going to come from, where the
three-year-old little toddler that's running down the side of a major highway is going to dart out
in front of you, where the group of five or six moms are selling their corn or their beans right
on the shoulder of the road. the bus coming at you that thinks he deserves to drive in the middle of
the road and that you need to go around. The kids walking to school, the taxi stopping wherever they
want, your mind never gets to take a break when you're driving on these roads. Yeah. And so even
though there's some gorgeous, absolutely scenic mountains around us. I mean, really jaw-dropping,
it's hard to get past when you come into these towns, all the rubbish and all the smoldering
grasses and hedges and bushes because they've just lit so much stuff on fire. the the air
that just burns your throat because of all the smoke. And to be honest with you, just the sheer
the harsh reality of this part of our world. The harsh reality of the world. Seeing kids carrying
buckets of water on their head that they've walked two miles to get. I It's just hard,
guys. And it's the people that live in these environments are strong and they're survivors.
And that is not what's driving this decision. It's just something we we just can't do it again. We
don't we just don't want to do it again. And and we looked ahead at the forecast and guys,
we would be heading north towards the equator. And so hotter temperatures, we look 100 plus
temperatures in the 10day forecast and beyond and we don't have an escape from the heat. Our
air conditioner was smashed in Bano and so just can't do it. Yeah. At this point in our journey,
we we've lived in this van and traveled the world in this van for almost 6 and 1/2 years. And uh at
this point in our lives and in our journey, going through these countries is is just not something
that we're that we're going to do. We're not going to do it anymore. We're we're just not going to do
it. So that brings us to the next step of this video. We don't have a long-term plan right now
because everything changed so drastically. But our short-term plan is we are headed to Mosmb
beek. We cannot return to South Africa right now because of visa time limits and we need to sort
some stuff out to figure out how that's going to work out. But we are headed to Mosmb beek where we
have found us a little place on the beach to rent and stay and regroup and come up with a long-term
plan. But that's going to take us 15 hours of hard driving and we need to cross the border tomorrow.
Mosmb beek has an e visa process. I have applied for that e visa and the email response said you
will hear from us within five days. So unless we hear from them on this day which would be day one
we are going to try to cross the border without our e visa and see if we can get that to happen
at the border. So, there's a lot of stress that's going to be coming over the next few days, but the
goal is to get to our place on the beach and then come up with a long-term plan. So, you guys are
caught up. I uh you may or may not understand that decision of why we're skipping so much of this
beautiful continent, but that's the decision we've made. And now we're border bound, aren't we, Kurt?
Yeah. We'll see how it goes, guys. All right. You're caught up. You know as much as we know.
It's okay, buddy. We've got a plan. It's going to take us 4 days.
Come on.
They've got a plan. Just got to give us a couple days. Red light. That's pretty. I give him that.
I know you were kid, but I just can't.
I don't know.
What's there?
All of my boys.
Foreign
Hello
Monday.
I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.
New driver in the house. But add insult to injury, our brake light just came on. Our wear
of our brakes now in Wind Hook, which was I don't know less than 6 months ago, we just had new rear
brakes put on. The last time we could remember putting front brakes on was Benon. So it hasn't
been super long. Maybe four or 5,000 miles, I guess. But anyway, here we are. And uh it's just
one more reason why we're glad we're not heading north because getting brakes, getting parts, going
through all the mechanical issues in these other countries is just impossible or difficult. Look,
we have about 1,000 kilometers to uh maybe 1,500 kilometers to our destination. So, it's going
to take about 3 or 4 days. We're going to push through and hopefully we can get our brakes fixed
when we get there. We'll be kind of monitoring as we go. We don't like pushing it this far,
but we really don't have another option at this point in time. And it's it's not the brake is bad
light. It's the warning your brakes are reaching the rotor's light. So, it's the warning light. So,
we're just going to drive cautious and and get to where we have our Airbnb and deal with it there.
And I will say for today, we have about another hour of driving and the roads have
held together better today than they did on our way in. Now, they're still bumpy, paoli,
narrow, but look, if we get these roads the whole way, we're extremely happy. So,
and we've had good luck with the police stops today. We've been waved through all of them
except for one. The last one did stop us and asked to see our CDP, which is like our passport
for our van. He checked it out and then sent us on our way as after asking a few questions. So,
so far today has been not near as bad as the first 24 hours in this country. And these mountains are
beautiful that we're coming through here, guys. The big stones, the monolith, all that stuff.
Um it is a very dry region and no grass. So when you come up to a little town or city or uh even a
village where there's people all the it's just the whole ground is just worn down and barren and uh
but there's also lots of bowab trees through here and those are beautiful and we've noticed that
some of them are starting to flower and some of them are getting leaves. So we're enjoying that.
We're enjoying the mountain scenes and uh yeah, we're just trying to make the best of this, guys.
We're bumping along on this old humpy dumpy bumpy road. We just stopped at a toll booth,
the second one of the day. The tolls have both been $3 and so not too bad. $6 to go,
I guess. I don't know, about four hours drive. But anyway, something that has happened here is,
believe it or not, they use the US dollar in Zimbabwe and that's their currency. And so, like,
we gave them, I don't know, 20 at one toll booth and they gave us change back. And these bills,
a lot of them are just old and dirty and worn out and stuff like that. And so they give us those as
change and then they're like, "Oh, we don't we don't we don't accept these bills cuz it's it's
worn." And we told them we got them at the last toll booth. And then something really strange
happened is the kid at the toll booth said, "If I accept this, they'll take it out of my pay. He'll
be responsible. He'll be responsible for it." And again, we've seen this type of behavior. Well,
in Namibia, we saw it in Angola where if they make a mistake, the business owners or whoever
the government actually takes it out of their pay or makes them pay for it. So, I just think that's
just kind of a really sad situation that they have to deal with. And so, anyway, just wanted to share
Hallelujah.
She lie.
to the left a little bit.
Do nobody
Dober.
She gets
I need
to
Do nobody do.
We made it to our campsite. The roads were a little bumpy, but nothing horrific like yesterday.
We are camping in the city here very close to the border at a sports club and a golf course. So,
I think it's $5 per person and $5 per vehicle to park back here in this field. Right out there be
the golf course. We're going to settle in. Kurt's going to make us a little lunch and
uh we will see y'all bright and early in the morning for the border. I'll keep checking our
email. Hope we get some sort of response from the online visa. Still need to find a place to
print out some forms in case we have to go to the border without our visa. But maybe we can
do that in the sports club. We shall see. But today wasn't horrible. Hopefully that's a sign
of things to come. We're feeling more and more comfortable with the decisions we're making. So,
we'll see you guys in the morning. Good morning, everyone. We are so lucky. We found a peaceful,
cool, tranquil oasis and we had a great night's stay. And I need to explain a little bit, but we
found it on I Overlander. Kind of a discreet little place uh on I Overlander. It's not a
formal campground. It's a golf course. It's a golf course. And really what it is is a community wreck
center. They have a 9-hole golf course. They have all sorts of different sports courts from like a
botchi ball court. I think some call it botchi ball, some call it uh squash, different things
all the same. But anyway, they also have uh they have a little cricket place and they have a little
uh of course a a restaurant here with that goes with the golf course. And Kevin,
the guy who uh we met who kind of runs the little camping portion, has been extremely helpful and
kind of helping us sort out our map. He's he's a local here and been to Mosmb beek several times,
which is the border we need to cross today. So, gave us all sorts of helpful information. It's
informal because there's not facilities. There is electrics. There's a big flat parking place to
stay, but uh and they also let you use showers, but it's kind of not set up like with abolution
blocks and stuff like that. Nonetheless, it's like the best wild spot or or informal camping ground,
I should say, that we've ever stayed at. And uh last night the cats got a good walk and G
Money's out here today leading the charge. But it got down in the 50s last night and after three or
four days and the hundreds. We were delighted to catch some cool weather. We're kind of up in the
mountains here. You guys were watching on the way in. It started to get more trees and more grass
and all that type of stuff. And so anyway, this morning I'm out giving G a walk because today's
going to be a bit of a stressful day. We have a border crossing uh crossing into Mosmb beek and
we still have not gotten the paperwork back from the e visa process. And so snow has submitted
that. They said 3 to 5 days. I believe it's been 3 days now since we submitted. And uh so we're
going over to the border anyway. We're only about 15 minutes away. Not sure if we can get in. And
uh well, you know how border crossings days are. It's a little bit nervous anyway. So, but we're
going to go for it. We're going to get this guy a walk and I'm going to get Vanna a little bit
of a walk. And uh but yeah, I mean chances are you probably won't be in this neck of the woods,
but if you ever are and are crossing the border, I highly highly highly recommend this place if for
no as a reason just to meet Gavin. He's a really cool cool and and nice guy. Beautiful morning
again today. A little breezy. It's probably in the low 60s, so it's gorgeous weather. And uh
we're going to get on the road. Morning, pumpkin. Good morning. You ready to go to Mosmb Beek? Are
you ready? No. You wanted to walk a little more at the golf course. That was a nice place to walk,
wasn't it? I know. Oh, here's some monkeys. Monkeys in the road. Go, monkey, go. Good morning,
guys. We got a pretty early start. We would have liked to have gotten an earlier start,
but Kevin told us that targeting around 8:00 at the border would be best traffic-wise. So, we got
to the border, I would say around 7:45 or 7:50. Checking out of Zimbabwe was super easy. It took
us about 10 minutes. Um, getting parked was the hardest part and maneuvering around all the semis,
of course. And then we made it to the Mosmb beek side. soon as you cross the border, everything's
a little more loud and jovial and a little more uh chaotic, but in a good way, if that makes any
sense. So, we got parked and then, of course, immediately at this border, you get swarmed by
fixers. I mean, they invade your private space. I'm fortunate. I'm a girl and I always just say,
"You must speak to my husband." And if you know me for real, that is so not like me. but it's how I
get the fixers off of me and then they focus on Kurt. Um, but we went inside and this morning I
checked our email first thing and we did not have our e visas where we had applied online yet. So,
we were taking a gamble by coming to the border to uh to get our visas on arrival because
us Americans on the website, their government website, it says the e visa is required. But we
got here and with a big smile and just as friendly as we could be like we always try to do at Borders
um everything went fairly smooth. We had to prove we had hotel reservations which I had made a copy
of already and then it was just a matter of going through the process of the boss of the immigration
department sitting with us at a desk and filling out all of our information into their log books.
Um, we had to pay uh $20 US, which we were able to pay with US dollars, which is good. They don't
use US dollars here in Mosmbique. They use their currency is called Metica. Uh, so we have to learn
how that translates to US dollars before we buy anything else. But we were able to get our visas
on arrival. They will only give you a 30-day visa at the border, but from what we understand and
from what the immigration officer said, getting extensions is fairly easy. You just have to go
to a local immigration office, and there is one fairly close to where our Airbnb is. So,
after immigration, Kurt headed to customs to deal with the van. I escaped the chaos and came and got
in the van for two reasons. One, we don't both need to be out there attracting all the fixers
and the attention that we usually attract at a border. And two, if I'm in the van, I feel a
little bit better about, you know, not leaving the van at a border. Borders can sometimes be sketchy.
Although, this one doesn't feel that way, but it's just kind of the system me and Kurt have worked
out. Once we get through immigration, he handles customs and comes back to the van afterwards.
And here he comes. And I think there was probably quite a bit more paperwork that has to be done at
this border. He's been dealing with the road tax, exchanging some money, and even though we have
uh insurance for most of the continent of Africa for our van, Mosmbique still requires that you buy
their insurance here at the border. So, he's been out doing all of that. It is now 9:10 and it looks
like he's slowly working his way back to the van and that'll be pretty good time. Nope, there he
goes. He's got to do something else. I saw him walk away. But anyway, border is going fairly
good. Kurt's taking the brunt of it. Here he is. He's getting in. We'll be right back. I need to
put the camera away. It is official. Welcome to Mosmb Beek. our 53rd country in the van. I think
that last part was a little stressful on Kurt. Do you remember the money amount you had to pay,
Curtie? Yeah, I do. We had to pay $75 for uh like a road impact fee, $75 and uh they wanted $150
to return. So anyway, it was $75 and then for insurance we had to pay $55 for one month and
um sorry guys there's a we've we've come let me explain we've come through the uh border and now
we're in the Mosmb beek where I think snow said welcome to Mosmb beek y but uh people trying Mosmb
beek semir trucks trying to get into Zimbabwe. I mean, we we're like it's miles. It's lined
up for miles and miles, maybe even five miles. I don't know. We're still going. Can't see the
end of it. And so all these guys bunch up at the the where you pay the road tax. And so it was a
line and it was hectic and basically you reach your money in the window. It almost requires a
bit of a fixer to do that. that they know the people. Plus, they speak Portuguese here and
I don't a little bit. And anyway, I gave the guy three bucks to help us get through that mess. So,
75 for tolls, 55 for insurance, and then whatever snow we had to pay for migration. And uh we're in
Mosmb beek and uh Kurt's dodging oncoming traffic because everybody goes around these semis. So,
we're going to turn this off, get through this mess. We'll be back in a little bit. Our next
thing is we need to find an ATM to pull out some local Mosmb beek money. Uh Kurt exchanged a little
there at the border, but the exchange rates at the border are always just horrible and hectic,
and you never know if you're getting robbed. So, we're looking for an ATM, and we're driving four
or five hours to get to our campsite. If you like this video, be sure to subscribe to our
channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos. And don't forget,
you can always follow us over on Instagram to see what's going on in between videos. Cheers, guys.
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