Only three teams remained in a sprint towards the finish line as Jill and Thomas departed from Seoul, South Korea at 3:57am.  Their excitement from learning their final city, Los Angeles, diminished when it became obvious that the trailing teams – Brook and Claire and Nat and Kat – would be allowed to catch up because the next flight wasn’t until much later in the day.

All three teams landed in Los Angeles together and Nat and Kat got out to an early lead by grabbing a cab quickly and heading out in search of Pier J at the Port of Long Beach.  Any excitement from their early lead was washed away when, upon arriving at the pier, Nat realized she was going to have to bungee swing off of a 150 foot high crane.  When Nat overcame her intense fear of heights and swung from the crane, Kat was overcome with joy for her partner’s perseverance.

After the three teams completed a bungee swing, they were whisked off to an unknown location via helicopter.  Nat and Thomas commented on how much more efficient traversing Los Angeles in a helicopter, while Brook and Claire were giddy about the experience.

The helicopters soon settled on the Rose Bowl in Pasadena and the teams were faced with a Roadblock.  The selected member had to help decorate an official Tournament of Roses float for the annual New Year’s Day parade.  Despite an early lead, Nat forgot to place water in the rose holders and had to redo one portion of the challenge.  Nevertheless, Nat and Kat remained in first place leaving the challenge.

Upon completing the Roadblock, the teams were given their most difficult clue to date.  There were three seemingly random questions that needed to be answered to get to the next destination.  Nat and Kat quickly got in a cab and used the driver’s cell phone to try to answer the questions.  

Jill and Thomas tried the same plan, but had their cab start driving before getting on the phone.  When their attempts to get answers via the phone started to fail, the pair feel behind.  Taking a different approach, Brook and Claire headed to a hotel to use a computer to find the answer.

Ultimately the teams needed to figure out that they needed to go to Quixote Studios, studio seven.  Once there, they would be faced with their most difficult task yet.  With a constantly changing board of faces from Pit Stop greeters, the teams had to correctly match up the right greeter for each leg of the race to move on.  

With a lead in hand already, Nat and Kat figured out their destination first and quickly got to work on the puzzle.  Using notes taken throughout the race, the pair had only minor difficulty in identifying the correct Pit Stop greeters.  After completing the challenge they were instructed to make their way to the finish line, Greystone Mansion.

Although Brook and Claire were as efficient as possible and similarly completed the greeter task fairly quickly, they were too far behind Nat and Kat.  The victory meant that the doctors would be the first all-female team to win The Amazing Race.