What are the currency rules?
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Declare cash or travellers cheques of 10,000 US dollars or more on the way in — and it is illegal to leave Zimbabwe with cash worth more than 2,000 dollars. Two different thresholds pointing in two different directions, and the outbound one is far lower than travellers expect.
Why does the outbound limit matter so much?
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Because a safari circuit is a cash business in places, and someone who arrived with a substantial float and did not spend it can find themselves over the outbound limit legitimately and accidentally. Two thousand dollars is not a large sum for a trip of this kind, and the rule is not discretionary.
Which authority decides at the border?
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The Zimbabwe Department of Immigration, at the airports and the land crossings. Victoria Falls and Kazungula see the bulk of the tourist traffic, and both are among the busier land borders in the region — Kazungula in particular, where four countries meet.
Which routes are the ordinary departures?
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Johannesburg, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Lusaka, Gaborone and Windhoek carry most of it, with Johannesburg the dominant connection by a wide margin. From Victoria Falls the regional hops to Zambia, Botswana and South Africa are frequent and short.
How does the visa on arrival work in practice?
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It is usually granted for 30 days, paid in US dollars at the counter. It is a straightforward process at a busy border, which means the queue rather than the decision is the variable. Having the exact amount in small notes is what makes it quick.
Extensions are applied for through the Department of Immigration. For a tourist itinerary the more common approach is to leave and re-enter, which the UniVisa or a double-entry e-visa makes straightforward — and which is why choosing the right visa at the start matters more than extending later.
What is special about Kazungula?
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It is the crossing where Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia converge, now served by a bridge that replaced the ferry. It is also one of the points where the KAZA UniVisa is issued, which makes it the natural crossing for a multi-country falls-and-delta itinerary.
Does the UniVisa cover Botswana properly?
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It covers day trips into Botswana, which is a narrower permission than it sounds. A day at Chobe returning the same evening is what it is designed for; an overnight stay in Botswana is a different matter and needs to be checked before you rely on it.
What happens if I overstay?
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Fines settled at departure, and a record that affects the next entry. Given that the visa on arrival, the e-visa and the UniVisa all run 30 days and are all straightforward to obtain, an overstay here is generally a planning failure rather than a refusal.
Is there a departure tax?
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It is included in the ticket price at the airports. At the land crossings there can be small local charges, and the outbound currency limit is the rule that actually needs checking before you leave rather than a fee.
What should be ready before I travel?
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A passport with six months and three genuinely blank pages, the right visa for the countries you are actually visiting, small dollar notes, and an awareness of the two-thousand-dollar outbound cash limit. The pages and the cash limit are the two that surprise people.
