From Serengeti to the Mara

After a relatively short run from the lodge we bid adieu to Ciprian and are hustled to our small plane some half hour early.

It is a small twelve seat Cessna aircraft with tiny aisle and bend over headroom. This process is crazy.  A short flight of under a half hour delivers us to the airline's private airstrip. What is that structure?  We have no idea.

 

 

A representative of the safari company greets and and we fill out paperwork and are loaded into a marvelous Toyota van for transport to the border.

A town of poverty surrounds the border.  At the border another representative of the company walks us through Tanzanian immigration and Kenyan immigration.  We transfer to a Kenyan van that delivers us to the airstrip.

 

Our flight makes three stops and we're the second.  CJ recognizes the pilot as the first woman in Kenya to become a pilot. She's embarrassed but not so much that she can't deliver two good landings and one bolter when an impala crosses the runway just in front of us when we're only a few feet from touchdown.

One can see the lodge from the airstrip.  However, the ride is not straight forward.

There is a mix-up on our room and the first room we receive is not what we reserved.  Eventually it gets sorted and we're side by side with Neil and Bronwyn as we should have been.