After last week's sunset ceremony, three teams faced an elimination challenge: Team Orange, Team Blueberry Cheesecake (Leandie du Randt and Anke Coetzer) and Team Green Apple (Nadia Nakai and Andile Khuluse). The task was to stack 21 Tropika bottles of different sizes on a wobbly wooden disc, with each pair tied together at the wrists and limited to one hand each.

Semenya and Zwane started strongly, but their disc came crashing down and they had to begin again. More fumbles followed, and they finished last. Their island adventure was over.

Semenya, however, left with perspective rather than regret. Here is how she looked back on it.

"Nobody goes to an island to compete and to leave first," she said. "But the moment it happened, I felt at peace. I compete to win, always, but I also respect the game." Her sporting lesson, she said, still applies: "You do not always control the result, you control your response."

Her self-talk was simple: "Steady, Caster, steady." The structure, she said, moves with every breath. "We wanted it too much, too quickly. Sometimes when you rush to fix a mistake, you create another one." Slowing down and finding a shared rhythm, she added, might have changed the outcome.

Discipline, endurance and mental toughness helped, but "Tropika is not the track." Puzzles, balance, patience and strategy matter just as much. The experience, she said, was "very humbling, and I needed that". On the track, hard training means speed. On the island, "you can be the strongest but if you can't balance, listen, and be patient, you fall."

Semenya called Zwane "a calm, positive soul and very driven". The pair clicked quickly, she said, built on respect and listening: she brought the competitive spirit, he the creative thinking and good energy. She left, she said, "with a new brother in Thando".

The biggest surprise was the mental pressure: living with strangers, being away from family, the cameras and the clock. The pleasant surprise was the warmth between rivals. "We compete hard but off-camera we support each other." Réunion itself reminded her of home, with its mountains, volcano, ocean and mix of cultures. Her favourite moments came in the quiet of early morning before challenges, "when you could hear the island breathing".

Her parting message: "A champion is not defined by winning every time, but by how you walk away. I walked away proud, grateful and a better person."

With seven duos remaining, the competition is intensifying. Tropika Island of Treasure airs on SABC 1 every Wednesday at 21:00, with a repeat on Thursdays at 18:00 on S3.