Inside the Botswana camp where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle holidayed before he proposed
IN the exclusive Botswana safari camp where Prince Harry took Meghan Markle on a romantic getaway last year, guests wake to hippos splashing in the waters of the Okavango Delta.
Harry whisked the American actress away last year for a surprise holiday to celebrate her 36th birthday, hopping between luxury resorts in the southern African country.
The trip last August came a year into their relationship and a few months before they got engaged.
The trip even meant to much that Harry sourced the diamond in Meghan's engagement ring from Botswana - the world's biggest producer.
The couple went to Botswana soon after they began dating in July 2016, a trip Harry described in a media interview last year as a "crucial" chance to get to know each other.
But Reuters have reported that the couple also visited the Okavango Delta last August, although it was kept a tight secret - with Kensington Palace and lodge managers declining to comment.
Harry and Meghan slept in a traditional thatched cabin with an outdoor shower and a carved wooden bed looking out over a lagoon.
Harry brought his then girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, to the same camp in 2007.
Hennie Rawlinson, owner of Meno a Kwena, where chefs prepare food over an open fire and guests dine al fresco said: "It's an extremely romantic destination, almost every night we have a spectacular sunset.
Botswana, a country of around two million spread over an area the size of France, has always been important to Harry.
He first visited when he was 13, two months after his mother Princess Diana died, and he has returned several times for leisure and charity work.
This year he also became a patron of Rhino Conservation Botswana.