Children fed, we next needed to print out the hotel reservations and finalise the visa process. But as always with African travel it was not that simple. We found a small internet cafe but it could not print from my phone, using their ancient tower machines took forever and hotmail decided I was in a different country so it locked me out my email. Lots of messing around and over an hour later we finally had an email print out of the hotel reservation.

After dropping of the documents at the embassy we could start to get excited for our trip to Mozambique! We were planning on setting off as soon as we had the visas!

First we had a bit of time to enjoy South Africa. The camp site we were staying at was in the beautiful hills around Nelspruit. A short hike from the campsite we found a little waterfall which entertained the boys for hours. It was freezing water but that didn’t stop my crazy family from stripping down to their pants! Finally just before dusk I convinced them it was time to return to the tent to get warm!

The next day (after we collected the visas 🙂 ) we spent the afternoon with friends. With all their advice and the tent packed up again we set off for the border! Mozambique here we come! Finally!

We had be warned we may be stopped by police on the way to the border but luckily it didn’t happen… Our filfly old car didn’t seem to attract any attention at all. But we did pass many big new shiny 4*4 (towing just as shiny boats) who had been pulled over.

The border itself was the usual chaos with a random assortment of buildings to navigate. Husband decided to go it alone, so he set off towards one of the buildings clearly waving no at people who approached him. I passed out the tablets and settled down for the wait. Although we had arrived early the car was already warming up so reluctantly I opened the window. Soon after I was approached by a man asking “Could I swap some notes”. He needed some clean bills for his visa. I knew this was often the case at borders and naively got out some notes to swap. Soon he was confusing me with different combinations and I knew it was a scam! Kicking myself for being so stupid I started to tell the man to go away. I think I lost about £10 worth of ZAR in the encounter but it could have been worst. Was I stupid? Yes… Would I do it again? Probably!

No matter how much of a seasoned traveller you are I have found you will get tricked/scammed at some point! Why? Well you are a traveller! As a traveller you will at some point (multiple in my case) find yourself in a situation where you need the generosity of others to get you out of trouble, so if another fellow traveller asks for help the chances are you will want to help.  If the guy in sydney hadn’t lent me his phone or the lady in zanzibar hadn’t swapped some cash with me or the man in Tronto hadn’t given us a room for the night our past travels may have lead to disaster. Unfortunately there will always be people that will take advantage 😦 but I won’t let it stop me trying to help people on the road.