Chris calmly woke me up this morning to tell me. He had realised this after noticing that the alarm had failed to go off on our phone, so after going to the toilet he got dressed and put on his shorts to discover that his wallet was in the wrong pocket, so thinking this strange, he checked inside to notice that it was empty of cash and then that our phone, which we had left on charge on top of the fridge was also missing.

Thank God we watched a film last night so had to charge the laptop and thus it was next to Chris’ sleeping head all night or that would’ve clearly been taken too. Can’t believe this has happened after 22 months of nothing, which of course is lucky I know, but still. Just hate the thought of someone creeping about in our room last night whilst we were fast asleep. Plus, we ALWAYS make sure we lock our door, so pretty sure it was the staff here at Wailoaloa, but of course we cannot prove it, but luckily our cards all remained in our wallet, but maybe that was so we could still pay our hotel bill before checking out! So, even though we stayed here when the floods were in Nadi and we hated it then, we came back as it was easy as we fly out to Tonga today. BIG MISTAKE.

After calming me down a bit Chris went straight to the bar to inform the manager that we had been burgled and left me inside the room as I was too upset to leave. He then came back explaining that a manager will be over to speak to us straight away in our room, so we waited. After an hour, we gave up waiting and went down to the bar to order breakfast and asked yet again to speak to someone.

As we were flying out today to Tonga we had to leave the resort at 2pm so we needed to get this sorted asap and I the staff were aware of this so I think they were trying to delay speaking to us as long as they could with the hope that we would just forget and think it wasn’t worth the hassle. But someone Chris managed to persuade me to be patient and eventually a manger came over to see us and said she had checked the cctv and no one was near our room all night. This is where my patience started to run out and I told her to check it again to make sure as someone clearly took our things as it was obviously not a gecko, so we disappeared and returned a little while later telling us once again that no one was there in a patronising manner which implied to me that she didn’t believe us. I then of course was very upset in the way this was being dealt with, not at all seriously so asked he to call the police so they too could check the cameras as nothing was going to be solved through this resort and by getting the police involved may also scare the resort and staff into action.

Chris then went and saw the cctv himself as we obviously didn’t believe the manager and discovered that the camera didn’t even cover our room! So no wonder they didn’t see anything on it! But of course this wasn’t mentioned to us, which fuelled us even further to belive that our things were stolen by a staff member as they knew nothing would show on the cameras and they would know where to hide and not be seen.

The police arrived after yet a few more hours of waiting and to be fair to them, they were fantastic. They assured us that they were going to conduct a full investigation into what happened and wrote us a long detailed report of what we told them and promised they would do whatever they could and email us the details of what they found.

As we said before, this was our last day in Fiji and we had the most amazing time previous to this day so we were glad when we finally arrived at the airport and we just decided that we would put this all behind us, well after I write a review on both Trip Advisor and Hostel Bookers so future travellers contemplating staying at Wailoaloa will think twice before risking their belongings also disappearing.

We set off again to the airport to fly to Vava’u but luckily a little later in the morning at 9:30am than at the crack of dawn and amazingly even though there were thunder storms at the airport the flight was still going just 30 minutes later than scheduled.

But unfortunately they had changed planes as the pilot that flies the DC-3 had run out of hours and we had to fly in a CIC. Poor Chris was broken-hearted as he desperately wanted to fly in this 60yr-old war plane, but I still think that the plane we did go on was pretty special, it looked like a rocket and was tiny and claustrophobic inside.

But at least we made it and in 2/3rds of the time the DC-3 manages it in. We were met at the airport by Lee, who took us to the beach and our home for the next few days. It is an amazing beach and the Fale was really nice, although pretty basic without electricity.

The beach started as sand but quickly became rocky with coral and lots of hidden sea urchins, so we had to be careful where we walked. After a while Chris came back and got his swimmies on so he could go for a snorkel, and managed to spike the side of his foot with a sea urchin, luckily not too badly.

After a while Lee, Isi and the team set off and said they would return around 6.30pm to collect us for dinner. We chilled on our own private beach for a while, before having a quick shower and being picked up. We were taken back to the village to have dinner in Isi’s house with his lovely family. We asked to have just what they would eat and we had a delicious Tongan meal of raw fish in coconut milk, taro and some local salad. All washed down with a tea made from lime leaves.

We had a few beers each and after a couple of hours watching the show it finished and so they drove us back to our private little beach.

written by  chrischarly on April 25, 2012 from Three Little Birds, Tonga
from the travel blog: Chris and Charly's Pacific Island Pit-Stop
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Chris did some fishing off the wharf, unsuccessfully, and I chilled out on the beach reading my book. We headed into town after lunch to go on the internet and Chris tried to help Lee sort out access to her website so he could write it for her.