One of the things that I had the most questions about was "what kind of paperwork do I need to do to travel to Africa?"  Hannes had everything under control, and was a great help in telling me what all I needed.  Here's a list of the paperwork that told me I would need to have:

• A current passport containing at least two blank pages, and valid for at least four months past the end of my trip.

• US Customs form 4457 for all of my valuables, including my rifle, cameras, and binoculars.

• A South African Police Service (SAPS) form 520 for my rifle

Along with this, I'd want to travel with extra copies of everything, including the paper contract between Limcroma Safaris and myself, as well as a copy of my shot records. 

Hannes told me that the easiest way for me to get my rifle into South Africa would be to contact a company called RiflePermits.com who specializes in this kind of thing.  When I sent them an email to start the process, they told me that in addition to the documents listed above I'd need to provide them with a letter from Hannes inviting me to hunt with Limcroma Safaris, as well as a hardcopy of my travel itinerary. 

I didn't have the invitation letter, but a quick email to Hannes confirmed that he had already sent a copy of it to RiflePermits for me.  Now that, my friends, is service.  Kathi Klimes had sent me a copy of my itinerary in an email late last summer, and Henry at RiflePermits confirmed that this would work just fine.  The only things left to do were to get out my passport and get my 4457 forms filled out.

Back in 1997 I had taken a vacation to England to visit a buddy who was living just outside of London.  I dug my passport out and found that it had just expired, so the first thing I needed to do was get it renewed.  This turned out to be pretty easy to accomplish.  Being a member of the AAA automobile club I went to their office in Gastonia, NC where they made free passport photos for me.  Then I simply went to the US Passport website and filled out the appropriate renewal form and mailed this in for standard processing.  The fee was $67.00, and within about six weeks I had my new passport.

To get the 4457s, Kathi helped me locate a US Customs Port that was about 30 minutes from my house.  I called them and told them I would be bringing a rifle to their facility, and I was instructed that this would be fine but that I should leave it in my truck when I got there and come inside first to tell them I was going to bring it in.  Along with the rifle I'd need to bring anything valuable that had a serial number on it:  binoculars, cameras, and even my Courtney Selous boots.  Without the 4457 forms on these items I could be taxed on them when I returned to America after the trip.

The visit to customs went quite well, and no one even gave my rifle a second glance.  I returned home, 4457s in hand, and proceeded to download the SAPS 520 form from the RiflePermits website.  Being very careful to follow the instructions on the RiflePermits website to the letter, I filled out the form correctly after making a couple of false starts at it.  I had a bit of confusion about one or two of the fields on the form, but Henry was able to help get my past my problems.  When the forms were complete I sent them all to South Africa via air mail, where Henry soon confirmed their arrival and reassured me that my paperwork was all in order.

Since there are so many papers involved, it was recommended to me that I make multiple copies of everything and put one copy in each piece of luggage that I would be taking with me.  Having a copy of my passport would make it easier to get a duplicate made if my original got lost for some reason.  Some of the folks on the Accurate Reloading website had found a nice little travel pouch for sale at Home Depot (item #100282543 on their website, in-store SKU #192466) that would easily hold all of my paperwork.  At the low price of $2.29 apiece, I bought three of them; one for each of the bags that I would be taking to Africa.

Although it seemed daunting at first, the paperwork itself was not all that bad, and with these tasks completed I was one step closer to Africa.