Prince Harry is once again celebrating the advantages of dating a millionaire's daughter.
He and 19-year-old Chelsy Davy have been whisked away to a tropical paradise in one of her father's private planes.
Zimbabwean Charles Davy is footing the entire bill for the romantic pre-Christmas break on remote Bazaruto Island off the coast of Mozambique.
Said to be 20-year-old Harry's first serious girlfriend, Chelsy got a taste yesterday of the attention he receives when they arrived at Durban airport in South Africa with a party of friends which also includes her brother Shaun.
While Harry was ushered through the terminal by up to 50 security guards, Chelsy followed, flanked by one of the prince's personal protection officers. She looked stunning in a strappy floral mini-dress, baseball cap and sunglasses.
In contrast, Harry appeared scruffy in an England rugby top, rolled-up jeans and, remarkably, bare feet.
The couple were taken separately to the twin-prop Mitsubishi MU2 on the tarmac to avoid being photographed together before their trip up the coast.
Bazaruto - whose name stems from the local word Ushurutswa, meaning island of the mist - is 20 miles off the coast of Mozambique. It is dominated by towering sand dunes and forests of coconut palms and cashew nut trees. In its centre are large lakes inhabited by myriad water birds, and crocodiles which settled on the island after swimming through the Mozambique Channel from the mainland.
Bankrolled
Harry and Chelsy's accommodation will be an A-framed thatched wooden hut on the north of the island close to a white sandy beach.
The island generates its own electricity but there are no televisions or telephones, giving guests a complete break from the outside world.
The couple will spend their days scuba-diving among the archipelago's famed coral reef. Harry is also likely to try his hand at the local sport of dune surfing and go deep-sea fishing, as the waters are famed for their stocks of marlin.
He will even be able to cook his catches for Chelsy on an open-air barbecue while they watch the sun go down.
According to friends, Chelsy - who was educated privately in England and is now a student at Cape Town University - has been secretly dating the prince for eight months since he visited South Africa on his gap- year travels.
They say she will travel to England in the New Year to meet Princes Charles and William at Highgrove, their country home in Gloucestershire.
The fact that Chelsy's father is bankrolling her island trip with Harry is causing unease in certain quarters after sources in Zimbabwe accused Mr Davy of having close links with President Robert Mugabe's brutal regime.
He is one of Zimbabwe's biggest ranch owners and is thought to control about 1 per cent of all agricultural land at a time when many white farmers are being brutally forced out.
The country's shadow chancellor, Eddie Cross, said: "If this relationship continues, it can only be a matter of time before Prince Harry visits Zimbabwe to meet Chelsy's parents.
"Mugabe would love that. Having the third in line to the British throne going to Zimbabwe, and all the publicity that would surround that, would merely serve to legitimise his government."
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