We spent the night at the Sheraton Tokoriki, and we woke up the next morning to rain and thick clouds. We grabbed breakfast in their picturesque dining room overlooking the ocean and the island featured in Tom Hank’s film, Castaway (don’t worry Dave- you were well represented at the table… we told everyone the “Wilson” story!). After breakfast we decided to take a hike in the rain and head to the top of the hill. Our hike led us to three beautiful vistas, and then down a path to a little beach that was covered in black lava rocks. We collected a few shells and sat for a bit, until the rain started coming down harder.

At that point, we hiked back to the hotel and, by the time we got there, it seemed there was an ever-so-slight break in the clouds (you’d laugh if you saw what we started calling “clear sky”), so we jetted down to the beach for some paddle boarding and a second round of snorkeling (have I told you about the purple star fist we got to hold yet?!?).

At the beach we got all of our equipment ready and then paused to take some product-placement shots of the water bottles. We must have looked a little crazy to the other vacationers who didn’t know what we are doing here- pausing whatever fun or beautiful activity we were enjoying at regular intervals to take a picture of one of our “model bottles” also enjoying the scene. It’s silly, no doubt, but it’s what we are here to do!

After taking some pretty stellar pictures we turned around to grab the GoPro camera so we could get some underwater shots of the Kai-Viti bottle and that epic purple starfish we had found. GoPro was nowhere to be found. We looked in the water, on the beach (where it had been sitting just a few yards away from us with the rest of our belongings), at the snorkel stand, in our bags… it was nowhere in sight. It’s still hard for us to imagine that it could have possible been stolen, but that was the only conclusion that we, and the hotel security could come up with. Reports were filled out, and the search-party dissolved. Thankfully, Amanda is a smart one and had it insured before we left!

We boarded the boat back to the mainland and arrived back in Port Denarau around 6:30pm, just in time for dinner. We sat on a patio overlooking the water, in between an Italian restaurant and an Indian restaurant. Both were phenomenal. I was particularly excited to eat Indian food, as I had been waiting for it since day 1! We loaded back in the car, and headed back to our home base hotel- The Shangri-la Royal Fijiian. We were very tired but before we could get some shuteye we had to pack up all of our belongings… we were home bound the very next day!