This morning, we woke up and got ready for our tour of the Mokolodi Game Reserve. On our way to the reserve, we saw several baboons walking in the road and on the side of the road. We pulled over to take a few pictures. As we got to the remote road that leads into the reserve, Tommie stopped the car and told Doug it was his turn to drive. He was a little anxious, but he wanted to try. The pedals are the same, with the clutch on the left, brake in the middle, and gas pedal on the right, but the driver sits on the right side of the car and shifts with his left hand. This was difficult and required a lot of concentration, but Doug did a good enough job (only stalled once).
The tour was given in an open truck with 3 elevated bench seats in the back. We drove around looking for animals and saw many of the same things we saw at Gaborone Game Reserve--impalas, kudu, warthogs. They explain at the beginning that there is no guarantee of seeing any animals because the reserve is so large and they don't use any tracking devices. The best part was going into the cheetah enclosure where we were able to pet a live adult cheetah. There are two males, and they are very calm. One was just sunbathing in the road and he was more than happy to let us pet him on the head. We could hear and feel him purring as we stroked his rough fur. We could also see his huge, sharp claws, but there was no fear that he was going to attack. He was quite content to let us rub his head and neck. We didn't want to leave this part, but there were other animals like giraffes and rhinos we wanted to see.
We continued to drive around, but we couldn't find any animals. The driver was on the radio with other guides, but nobody had spotted any of the bigger animals. Finally, as our tour was about to end, another guide radioed that they had found a colony of giraffes not far from our location. The driver quickly turned the truck around and sped over to that area. As we approached, we could see their heads peeking over the treetops. When we pulled up, we saw around 9 or 10 giraffes of different ages just standing around and eating the vegetation. We stopped for around 10 minutes and took a lot of pictures. The giraffes stared at us as if we were the attraction, not them. We ran out of time and didn't get to see the rhino, although we did see a pile of rhino dung, but that was fine. Seeing the giraffes and petting the cheetah was definitely worth the trip.
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