Welcome back to the wilds of Costa Rica, where love is in the air. And for some couples, it’s still in the air while they are on the air! Ok, catch your breath as the show begins.

Six couples, all of whom decided to stay together last week, remain in the competition as we are told that we’re in for a surprise or two, including a medic call. After last week’s Couples Choice elimination ceremony, they gather around a dartboard game, with more throws being misses than hits. We get reintroduced to three of remaining couples: Derek & Jess (who we caught under the covers last week), Miles & Heather (she’s fondly stroking his hair in bed), and Ben & Brandee (lights out!).

Now that they’ve had a good night’s sleep (maybe!), the new day dawns with a trek ahead. A new twist is that the first place couple is no longer immune from elimination, although they still get the first-place reward treats. Guys are separated from the gals and switched around for the task and return to cabins. Well, so much for the strategy of sticking with a single partner throughout the whole game! Some of them are a little upset at being split up, but this “absence should make their hearts grow fonder”. Hah, don’t count on it, but we’ll see.

The first task is to open a box with a 3-combination padlock on it by trying different numbers, already given the first number. This shouldn’t take long with only 100 possibilities, but it introduces some randomness in the order the teams leave the task. Inside the box, they find a map to find their way along a jungle trail to some crates. They are not to open the crates yet, but they each have to load two of them onto sometimes not quite so cooperative donkeys. One team has so much trouble, that the guy (Skip) carries one of the crates.

At the next stop, they crack open their crates, where they find rappelling gear stashed inside. They rappel down a waterfall cliff side, a task made easier with the bottom of the rope pulled away from the falls. After the falls, they make their way downstream hiking in the stream bed, following the map to the idol logs they need to pick up before going to the finish. Uh, oh, Derek drops the idol he is carrying and *Bang!* it lands square on his big toe. Ow, ow, ow! It’s bleeding and he can’t walk on it. It may or may not be broken, but he’s losing that toenail for sure.

Ben & Samantha finish in first and get the prize. Recall that the partners were split up with someone different, so neither Samantha nor Ben are that thrilled with having a dinner out with a “stranger”! “Ben and I are going to have a great time,” she says and he blows her an air kiss. Skip & Jess finish second, Derek & Erica come in third as he recovers temporarily from his toe injury, Mike & Theresa come in fourth, Steele & Heather come in fifth, and Miles & Brandee wander to the finish line in last.

It turns out Derek’s toe injury is worst than it looks (and it looked pretty bloody!) and he is carted off in an ambulance. Meanwhile, Ben & Samantha go to the luxury villa. Ben says “it’s the perfect place to take your girl and…” The rest of them go back to their cabins to repack and join up with their “new partners”. Jess leaves Derek, her original partner, a note on his door to let him know where he can find her when he gets back from the hospital so that she knows he’s Ok. Meanwhile, Ben & Samantha are having a good time, but neither one is expecting anything from the other.

Back at the cabins, some of the original couples get back together to socialize in spite of having a “new partner”. The other new partners see this and play along. Ben & Samantha return and she goes back to Mike (her original partner) but Brandee doesn’t think Ben was that excited to see her, so she walks off in a fit! The other guys tell Ben, who looks like he’s tied down a few, that he’s a (bleep). Some breakups look imminent, especially with at least one contestant clearly more interested in staying in the game than finding the love of their life. On the other hand, Miles and Heather finished last and second to last in the competitions with their “new” partners, but they want to stay together. If things fall apart for any other couples, they may get a reprieve. Meanwhile, the gossip mill flows as fast as the jungle waterfalls.

The coffee talk continues with the dawn of the next morning. Brandee and Ben are looking like the odd ones out and Brandee is rethinking whether she didn’t misjudge him. Miles and Heather are hoping they’ll still be able to stay together and almost all of them are sensing a shakeup coming.

With a gibbous moon in the sky, the Couples Choice ceremony begins. It turns out Derek’s toe is broken and the chance of infection is quite high. But the host Darren invites him to share a few words before he leaves the show for good, as he will not be able to continue (awww… bummer!). Jess looks longingly at him, and he at her, and he invites her to LA and hope they can come back there on their own. They hug before he leaves with a long squeeze of a hug (awww… sweet!). Well, score this one as “love found”.

Now comes the choices. Samantha has first choice and she chooses to switch back to Mike. Ben offers to take Brandee back and then she says she “thinks shes going to decline”. Brandee doesn’t seem to trust Ben after his night out, so there’s our first split as Ben goes off to the sidelines to the Match Area. After all is said and done, four couples reunite to their original partners, and we have Ben and two gals (Brandee and Derek’s love Jess) in the match area. Ben apologies to Brandee and they make up and stay in the game.

So Jess goes home along with her new love in life, Derek. She has to be the happiest contestant we’ve seen leave an RTV show in a long, long time.

As the sages of old once said, sometimes by losing one thing, you gain the greater treasure.