Feb 18   8 am start. Brown capped swallow. Lesser striped swallow. New one: Cape buffalo. Warthogs , topi, impala and we’re not to the main gates of the park yet.  Clear sunny day, no wind, what the animals like.  While driving en route, I might as well tell you one more honey badger story.   Peter’s friend saw a honey badger encounter a puff adder.  Big showdown, fight to the death.  Honey badger eats the puff adder head first and the suddenly falls over motionless.  Ten minutes later, he pops up and runs away perfectly fine.   Guide hears of big pride of lions so, we go try and find them. No luck.   Warthogs hang around the topi in the tall grass so the topi can look out for predators and warn them.   Just found the lions. Family of five just finishing a meal, one carrying a thigh bone.  Not much left now. They are cleaning one another, sneezing, and quarreling now and then.  Most of them each have their piece.   They apparently don’t know that there is a badly limping topi in a field just 300 yards away that we passed. Won’t last the night.   Hammerkop nest, then a mangrove kingfisher. Looking for leopards now along a creek ,  driving slowly through the grass.  Swallows and bank martins join in for the insect feast again.   Check tire pressure, 1016.  Looking 360 degrees we have a brown snake eagle, warthogs, elephants, impala, saddle ill stork, waterbuck, warthogs in that sequence, all within 200 yards.   Find a hippo lying in a big mud pool right next to the road.  Very unusual.  Gets up and runs a few yards, then limps away.  Injured, maybe sick.  Should be in the water now. No family nearby or water.  Bad future.   Next scene is 250 cape buffalo with cattle egrets and oxpeckers riding their backs, surrounded by grey herons, warthogs, and a troop of baboons, all in a giant open flat space.   Went to the airstrip with King today at 3:30 and found a big hyena next to the road picking over leftovers where the lions had been earlier.  Then we saw a group of lions within three minutes’ drive of the air strip, so we went by ‘cuz the plane wasn’t due for eight minutes.  Nice finish.   This is indeed the most interesting and exciting trip ever.  Something surprising and new 100 times a day.  Wonderful people at every turn.  Special thanks to Bill and Deb Rooney  who inspired me to go and did real extra work to make it happen in the perfect sequence of stops.  They introduced us to many special people as well.   See you all soon, I hope=