The AfricaAway Safari Companion - Before You Go
to your holiday.
Passports and Visas Before you leave do check when your passport expires. Some countries will allow you to stay there up until the very last day of your passport’s validity. Others demand that there is still at least 6 month’s remaining on your date of entry. For up-to-date information you can consult the UK Foreign Office website – www.fco. gov.uk – following links through ‘travel advice’ for the relevant country, to ‘entry requirements’, although airline staff whose job it is to determine whether your documents are in order, normally rely instead on the International Air Transport Association website – www.iatatravelcentre.com.
the relevant country’s embassy in your own country prior to travel, but most people choose instead to simply pay for a visa on arrival, which is a much simpler process, although you may have to queue for a while to achieve this. The cost should be exactly the same. Again, you should confirm all this with your tour operator first. Visas may be single entry type, or multiple entry, which you will need if you are, for example, visiting another country in the middle of your trip. A classic example of this - which you might not think of - is if you are visiting Livingstone, in Zambia, but nip across the border into Zimbabwe for a few hours, to view the Victoria Falls from the Zimbabwean side.
Most African countries require incoming visitors to obtain a visa, although the requirements may vary according to your nationality. Your tour operator should, of course, advise you as to the requirement here, but it doesn’t do any harm to confirm this for yourself by visiting the relevant African country embassy website. This will also inform you as to what immunisations you must have, for example a yellow fever certificate is required by some countries, but not by others.
True Stories Number Two: Yellow Fever Inoculation Just for your amusement, and as an introduction to the relaxed attitude that can operate in Africa: I recently visited Zambia (which does not require a yellow fever certificate), followed by Tanzania (which does), and somewhat carelessly had omitted to bring my certificate with me. Surprisingly, I was told that I couldn’t depart Zambia for Tanzania unless I had such a certificate (needless to say, on arrival in Tanzania itself nobody was the slightest bit interested in checking on this). Accordingly I was sent to the airport’s first aid department to be vaccinated on the spot. On grumbling that this wasn’t really necessary since I was in fact already covered (and not looking forward to what is not one of the pleasantest of vaccinations), the nurse said “That’s OK then”, and proceeded to issue a certificate stating that I had been vaccinated (several years previously) “20 dollars please” - which was then quite happily accepted by the airline departure desk! That’s Africa for you!
You can obtain your actual entry visa by applying to
Really, really boring. Making Payment Although the tour operator who you book through should have some form of financial bonding in place, a further level of protection is provided by paying by means of a credit card. You don’t have to pay the full amount in this way (there may be a surcharge for payment by credit card), but, for example in the UK, under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974, you will be protected for the full amount involved (up to a limit of £30,000), even if you only pay the deposit required in this way (so long as the total amount exceeds £100). If anything goes wrong you can apply to your credit card supplier for redress. A recent ruling has confirmed that such protection applies even for payments made to an overseas supplier. What is rarely realised is that you may even get a similar level of protection if you use a Visa debit card instead, although this is not covered in law as above. However most bank staff are unaware of this provision (known as the ‘chargeback’ scheme), and indeed it has only just been established, after stiff resistance, that Section 75 credit card claims themselves do apply to overseas suppliers, and
www.Safari-Guide.info www.AfricaAway.com
10