Craig and Candice

Finally we were on our way to our newly bought timeshare at Ngwenya lodge on the Crocodile River, bordering the Kruger National Park – very exciting! Our friends had come up to join us for the weekend and it was going to be a great couple of days with them and then some time with just Craig and myself. What a wonderful way to spend our week in the bush! We had an awesome time with our friends but eventually on Monday morning they were all on their way back to the daily grind. Lucky for us we still had four more days of rest and relaxation, what more could I have asked for? Well…

We were sitting on the balcony overlooking the river, listening to the Hippos playing in the water in front of us and watching the most amazing little display of fireflies flickering in the reeds on the river bank. Craig asked me what I felt like doing the following day; I suggested that we take an early morning drive through the park if the weather looked good.

5am I get woken gently, “come on get up, the weather is good, we going to go for a drive through the park” at this time of the morning I must admit I did not feel like doing much least of all getting dressed up… so I put on a pair of shorts and a strappy summer top, pulled my hair into a pony tail and I was ready to go. Craig was up and ready to go, very strange for him as he is not at all an early morning person.

We were off… to the park… So I thought! Because of the rain a couple of days earlier we were not able to use the Crocodile bridge entrance to the park so we had to drive to the next closest gate. After missing the turn off for the Malelane gate I asked if we were going to take another route and go in through a different gate. To which Craig replied very calmly... “You’ll see”. At this stage I was in no mood to question any further so sat quietly while we passed two of the gates along our trip to who knows where!

Eventually we pulled into a place with a big sign that said Elephant Whisperers. I looked at Craig and smiled, knowing that he had arranged a surprise for me. I had wanted to go on an elephant ride for along time. He smiled back and said we are here!

We were greeted by the friendly smiles of the staff at the elephant sanctuary and lead onto a big deck area where the elephants were playing and eating and breaking branches off of the trees, all within arms reach away. Craig dashed off for a couple of minutes; I assumed that he needed to go to the bathroom after the long drive. I sat watching the little elephant playing close to the deck and the large male in the distance uprooting small trees for fun.
Eventually we were lead off down the path by the guides where we were taught all about the elephant and how they show emotion and we got to feel and feed and touch a little one. It was absolutely amazing to learn how clever they are, they can learn up to 50 times more commands than an average dog. On this note they then chose a couple of people from the group to come forward and feed the little one by holding his trunk saying our names and then feeding, we did this four times. After we had done this the handler threw his cap a little way off and told the elephant to fetch it and go and give it to Candice, he went off picked up the cap with his trunk and brought it straight to me… Wow!

Then it was time to go for photos with the elephant, we had our picture taken with Tambo a male elephant who weighed 5,2 tons and stood over 4,5 m tall. It was quite intimidating to stand under this huge animal. Once that was done we got to go on our elephant back safari. We got to go on Tambo, we climbed up onto the ramp and climbed onto this beautiful animal and we were off, we walked for about half an hour with the guide telling us all sorts of information about the elephant and the story of how Tambo came to be at the sanctuary – apparently he has caused 2 million rands worth of damage to a lodge where he used to live after a female that he liked rejected him for another bull elephant.
After our trail through the bush at the sanctuary we returned to where we began our walk and all the other guests were helped off of their elephant and started to leave, we were still on our huge elephant! I started to wonder why everyone else was leaving and all the elephant were having their harnesses taken off and stored away, but we weren’t. Eventually they started leading all the other elephant down toward the dam and Tambo followed at this stage I thought that we were perhaps going to get off at another point. We got to the river and there it was a beautiful table set with the most delicious fruit and croissants, champagne and orange juice at this point I was very surprised, Craig had organized such a beautiful breakfast for us. How lucky was I to have such a wonderful man. So off we climbed and strolled down to the deck with the breakfast, I was greeted by someone who washed my hands with herbs and flower petals in a stone carved hand basin and dried them with a fresh fluffy towel.

We sat down to have some refreshing orange juice after being in the sun for a while, 4,5 m in the air! The elephant were playing around the dam and enjoying the vegetation around them when one of the guides came over and said that they wanted to see if the little elephant that they had taught my name earlier in the day would remember me. So we got up and saw this little cutie strolling over to me carrying a basket in his trunk, it was the cutest thing I’ve seen. As he got nearer to the deck the guide instructed him to find Candice and give her the basket, so he came plodding along and as he got near to me stopped and swayed his head from side to side and stretched out his trunk to give me the basket, It was amazing that this beautiful creature could remember who I was.The guide then said that there was a little gift inside the basket for me, I could see flowers at the bottom of the basket and immediately thought that Craig had organized him to bring me some flowers, little did I know.. I reached into the basket to remove the cloth covering my gift… and felt a little square box… my heart nearly stopped, I took the box out of the basket and Craig took it from me… By this stage the guides had all disappeared. He knelt down on one knee and opened the box, he looked deep into my eyes as if he was looking straight into my soul, and the most beautiful words poured out of his mouth like honey! Will you spend the rest of your life with me and be my wife? Well... “Of course I will, yes, yes, yes!)

We sat and ate our delicious breakfast and drank champagne, it was like we were the only people on earth. Craig had arranged every little detail without me knowing one little thing, we have been together for 11 years, best friends and high school sweet hearts, we are more in love now than we have ever been and cherish every moment that we have to spend together.
I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with my awesome soul mate.