Month by month
South Luangwa in December
December is the valley letting out its breath: 227 mm of rain, a river rising by the week, newborn antelope in every thicket and almost nobody watching. The park stays open all month; it is the roads that close.
If you only want the answer
December is a green-season trip from the short list of river camps near Mfuwe, at the lowest rates on the calendar. Come for birds, babies and storm light, and accept that the deep park is off the map until the dry season.
Into the rains
The normals put December at 227 mm across 24 rain days, second only to January, with highs of 30.3°C and nights of 22.1°C. The furnace of October and early November is gone; what replaces it is humidity and the daily theatre of build-up, storm and washed sky.
Underfoot, the black-cotton soils saturate and the interior road network goes with them. Unreachable is the accurate word, not closed: the gate is staffed every day of the year.
The December shortlist
Mfuwe Lodge, Chinzombo, Nkwali, Wildlife Camp and Croc Valley trade straight through the month, Thornicroft runs to the end of it, Flatdogs continues into January, and Kafunta holds on until the first days of the new year. Everything else has gone dark until April and May.
Through mid-December the Mfuwe Lodge elephants are still making their lobby crossings for the last of the wild mangoes, before the fruit runs out and the tradition pauses for another year.
What December is actually for
Birds, first: migrants in full breeding colour, over 400 species on the park list, and the strongest months of the birding year getting under way. Then the newborns, dropped in their hundreds after the first storms, and the predators that follow them.
Boats need more water than early December usually has; the river safaris start properly from January as the flood builds. If Christmas week is your window, book it ahead, because the short list of open camps is exactly that. Any other December week, you can nearly name your room.