The best time of year to visit Kruger

The honest answer is that there is no bad month, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling a specific month. But the Kruger in July is a completely different holiday from the Kruger in January, and knowing which one you actually want is worth more than any packing list.

We drive the park most weeks of the year from the lodge, so here is the version we give guests on the phone.

If you want to see animals: May to September

This is the dry season, and it is the reason most people come. The grass drops, the bush thins out, and the leaves come off — you can see thirty metres into scrub that in February is a green wall. More importantly, the seasonal water disappears. Everything with a thirst has to walk to the same handful of permanent waterholes and rivers, and it has to do it every day.

So you are not really getting more animals. You are getting the same animals, concentrated in places you can predict, with nothing in the way.

June and July are the two months we quietly recommend if a first-timer asks. Cold mornings, empty roads, and the best odds you will get.

The trade: it is properly cold before sunrise. Not cold like a European winter, but cold enough that an open vehicle at six in the morning is a serious proposition in a fleece. We hand out blankets and hot water bottles, and everyone is fine by nine. Days climb to the low twenties and it is faultless.

If you want the bush at its best: November to March

Summer is green, loud and dramatic. The rains arrive, the whole Lowveld goes from khaki to almost tropical in about ten days, and the migrant birds come back — this is when the birders arrive, and they are not wrong. Impala drop their lambs in a tight window around November, which brings the predators in behind them.

Afternoon thunderstorms build over the escarpment and break in the late afternoon. If you are a photographer, and Ruan is, this is the light you actually want: enormous skies, side-lit grass, and a storm as a backdrop.

The trade: the grass is high, the leaves are back, and animals do not have to walk to water because water is everywhere. You will work harder for a sighting. It is also hot — mid-thirties is normal — which is when the middle of the day at the lodge earns its keep.

The shoulder months nobody books

• April — the bush is still green from the rains but starting to thin, the heat has broken, and rates are lower everywhere. Arguably the best value month of the year.
• October — hot, dry and tense, right before the rains break. The most concentrated game viewing of the whole year, and the least comfortable weather. Serious safari people love it.

A note on the estate

Everything above is about the park. Muunga sits on the Hoedspruit Wildlife Estate, where plains game moves through year-round regardless of season — so even on a green-season stay, when the Kruger is hard work, you will have something on the way to breakfast — giraffe, zebra, kudu, nyala, waterbuck and impala.

So, when

If it is your first safari and you want to be certain you will see things: come in June or July. If you have done a safari before and want the place at its most alive: come in January or February. If you want the best of both and the smallest bill: come in April.

And whenever you come, book the full-day Kruger trip for the middle of your stay rather than the first morning. You will read the bush better on day three than day one, and you will enjoy it more.