Illegal for 10 minutes

So last weekend, we splurged on a 5-star game lodge called Tau in the Madikwe game reserve, about 1.5 hours from Gabs. It's in South Africa, which requires not one, but two border crossings each way. That detail was not made clear to us. Driving through the poorly signed border, we came to the South African side, where the border guards seemed to be more curious about our iPod than the stamps in our passports. Coming back, we passed through the RSA customs without a problem, then promptly drove across the Botswana side via the truck lane (got confused). No guard was there--just an empty chair, so we figured that we'd have no problems. I guess our driving through must have woken the guard up, because our friends in the car behind us got turned around and had to go through the "proper channels."

Long story short, we were on Botswana turf for about 10 minutes waiting on the road for our friends before we realized that we may have done something wrong. We turned around and went back to the Botswana border station. We were told by one guy that we'd have to go inside and pay something like $130 for crossing the border illegally. In the most apologetic and deferential of manners, we told him that it was not my responsibility to wake up the border guards and that we had made a simple mistake that we were now trying to rectify. He sent me to the "entry" side where, after berating us for "making things complicated," another guard with sores on his lips told us that we could pass through the "exit" lane and re-enter Botswana legally.

More from Jo'burg tomorrow before we return...