Elephant Sands

Livingstone to Elephant Sands
Today we were on the road at 10am and back to the border crossing from Zambia to Botswana. It only took an hour of so this time as there was less paperwork for Stefan. I experimented with how much notice they take of person identification at passport control by wearing my dark glasses and large hat. I am pleased to report you can pretend to be anyone you like when entering Botswana as I was not asked to remove my glasses or hat and I'm pretty sure they didn't even look at my face once. In fact, I know I could have worn a full on burkah with just a slit for eyes because I saw a woman do that when we were going into Botswana.
We did have an interesting incident before the border though. As we were driving out of Livingstone there were people selling the hazard triangles - you know the sort you see out when a truck is broken down. We all commented on what a funny thing it was to sell from a roadside stall and wondered how much business they were doing. Stephan commented that there was a new law in Zambia about carrying the triangles. Next thing we were stopped by a road block of police and checked for all the requirements - permits, license and of course did we have the 2 triangles? We found one in the glove box but no sign of the second triangle. As this is a hired van the hire company should have been up to speed with that. Stephan had to go with the very officious and serious cop to the cop car and there was discussion that went something like this:
Stephan: "Just because I am missing one triangle you are going to fine me? I am bring a lot of tourist dollars to your country."
Cop: "You are required by law to carry two triangles" (or whatever they are officially called)
Stephan: "This is silly man."
Cop: "You are calling me stupid? Then I will fine you for insulting a police officer."
Stephan: "But I didn't say you were stupid! I said this was silly."
Cop: "Silly. Stupid. They're the same thing."
Stephan: "If you look in the dictionary they have different meanings and I wasn't calling you silly or stupid anyway."

Personally I was relieved that it was Stephan driving and not Geoff because he has a history of not dealing with cops very "politely". Once we were going to Melbourne and we were pulled over. As the cop came up to his driver door he took off his seat belt. When the cop arrived at his driver side window he said to Geoff, "why weren't you wearing your seat belt?"
At this point Geoff jumped out of the car and yelled "bullshit" loudly at the cop. As a consequence we spent a day in Benalla court with me giving evidence that he had been wearing his seatbelt and he got off. In the case of this short tempered Zambian cop I'm thinking it might not have ended this way! ...imagining us all lying face down on the side of the road with our hands cuffed behind our back...and guns pointed at our heads.
The fines are on the spot in Zambia and with a bit of bribery they are usually lowered. The cop demanded the fine money in kwacha (Zambian money) but Stephan didn't have enough. So there was a bit of too-ing and fro-ing as Stephan organized the money. Some of us had US$ so we gave him a few of those. The cop initially was insisting Stephan return to Livingstone.
There is a lot of corruption in African police forces. One incident Stephan came across was when he was driving along at the correct speed, and was pulled over by the cops for speeding. He demanded to see the speed on the speed gun but the cops were evasive about this, so Stephan became insistent and peered in through the window of the cop car to see they had been pretending a hair dryer was a speed gun. TIA - This Is Africa.
The rest of our journey was uneventful and we arrived at Elephant Sands about 2:30pm. We checked into tents and went and sat by the waterhole in the middle where the elephants come to drink. Elephant Sands was set up by a guy who had elephants that would come and drink from the water hole on his land. It was quite a small operation of a few mud brick chalets to start with but gradually expanded until now there are numerous campers and more permanent glamping style tents. When the water hole dried up the elephants would sniff out the water in the pipes in the chalets/permanent tents and started to rip them apart trying to get it. As a consequence, he now trucks in the water which feeds from a tank to a small ground level trough at the edge of the waterhole. There were a few elephants there when we arrived and through out the evening they came and left. They were interesting to watch and the big spot light on the hole helped us to see what they were doing.
We were all in bed by 9pm.Read more