Leaving Kenya

Our last morning was like any other. We settled confusing bills, our waiter thanked us for being so good despite this. We'd seen plenty of service abuse from different cultures at the Lodge.

This also gave Nina her last opportunity to ask, "Where do you live?" He didn't understand - perfect! It turns out he was interning for his tourism degree. That waiter, along with a staff member who was clearly a fan of my Eliza Thornberry dress and said, "I hope you ran the best", were my favourites.

We waited in the lobby for our driver to appear. He didn't, and just as were getting worried for our 8.30am flight, a man appeared saying 'your flight is ready'. Staff members carried our bags up the drive, in the field by the lodge's gate there was a small plane. Our pilot looked like the guy from Jurassic Park. We bundled into it - the isle was so tiny you had to side step down the plane - we ad to lap the runway to clear the gazelles.

Our flight out of the Maasai Mara

The pilot was good, it was roughly a 50 minute flight to Nairobi Airport. On the land below there wasn't any obvious road, just green shrub covered ranges with circular Maasai villages, livestock in the centre pen. It amazed me how remote these were, but didn't surprise me either given how many maasai we saw walking home in the dark after running the race, even though there were no obvious settlements for miles.

The Maasai walking home in the dark after running 23km

We touched down in the Nairobi and began the journey back to New Zealand.