When to go

The month rules out more trips than the destination does.

The home page prints a calendar: six destinations across twelve months, each cell peak, workable or avoid. This page reads the same calendar the other way, one row per month instead of one row per trip, then adds up what each row contains. Nothing here is a new claim about the weather. Every cell below is the cell the home calendar prints, and the counts are produced by a script that reads that calendar rather than by hand.

Each month, and how many of the six it suits

Read the peak column first. It is the number of trips the calendar is happy with in that month, and it swings from two to five across the year. A month with two at peak is not a bad month. It is a month where the choice is made for you.

Every count and every name in this table is derived from the home page calendar. The At peak, Workable and To avoid columns are counts out of six. Peak means the dry, calm window that calendar books around. Workable means bookable with a caveat. Avoid means the calendar steers travellers to another region.
Month	At peak	Which trips are at peak	Workable	To avoid	Where it lands
January	4 of 6	Cape Town and the Winelands, Garden Route, Zanzibar, Dubai	1	1	Four at peak. The bush is the one destination the calendar takes off the table.
February	4 of 6	Cape Town and the Winelands, Garden Route, Zanzibar, Dubai	1	1	The same shape as January, and both of them are wide months.
March	3 of 6	Cape Town and the Winelands, Garden Route, Dubai	1	2	The only month in the year with two destinations to avoid: the bush and Zanzibar drop out together.
April	2 of 6	Cape Town and the Winelands, Dubai	3	1	One of the three narrowest months. Three of the six are still bookable, so the trip is possible, the choice is not.
May	2 of 6	Kruger, Mauritius	3	1	The month the bush turns. Its two peaks are the bush and the Indian Ocean, which are not close to each other.
June	3 of 6	Kruger, Garden Route, Mauritius	2	1	The Garden Route arrives at peak here, the month the calendar notes the whales start.
July	4 of 6	Kruger, Garden Route, Mauritius, Zanzibar	1	1	Four at peak. The one to leave out is Dubai, where the calendar records summer heat.
August	4 of 6	Kruger, Garden Route, Mauritius, Zanzibar	1	1	The same four as July, and Dubai is recorded as heat and humidity rather than heat alone.
September	4 of 6	Kruger, Garden Route, Mauritius, Zanzibar	1	1	Three months in a row with the same four at peak, and the bush page notes that its dry winter months run busier and dearer than the rest of the year.
October	5 of 6	Cape Town and the Winelands, Kruger, Garden Route, Mauritius, Zanzibar	1	0	The widest month on the calendar: five at peak and nothing to avoid.
November	4 of 6	Cape Town and the Winelands, Garden Route, Mauritius, Dubai	2	0	Four at peak, nothing to avoid, and the two workable rows are the bush and Zanzibar.
December	2 of 6	Cape Town and the Winelands, Dubai	4	0	Only two at peak, and nothing to avoid. December is the month where what you pay is the season and not the destination.

Across the 72 cells of the calendar, 41 are peak, 21 are workable and 10 are avoid. No month has all six at peak, and no month has none of them. Seven months carry four or more at peak. The other five are March, April, May, June and December, and four of those five still hold at least two destinations at peak.

The window each destination actually holds

The same calendar, read along the rows. A window is a run of consecutive peak months. Two of the six have two windows rather than one, and that is the most useful thing on this page: Cape Town and Dubai both come back at the end of the year.

Peak months, workable months, months to avoid and the peak windows, all counted from the home page calendar. The last column repeats the caveats that calendar records on its own cells.
The trip	Peak window	Months at peak	Months workable	Months to avoid	What the calendar records
Cape Town and the Winelands	Jan to Apr, and Oct to Dec	7	5	0	No caveat on any month. The five workable months are May to September.
Kruger	May to Oct	6	3	3	January to March are marked avoid with no reason recorded on the cell. November and December are workable.
Garden Route	Jan to Mar, and Jun to Nov	9	3	0	The longest peak run of the six, and June is marked with the note that the whales start.
Mauritius	May to Nov	7	5	0	January to March are workable on the note hot with cyclone risk. April and December are workable with no note.
Zanzibar	Jan to Feb, and Jul to Oct	6	3	3	March marks the long rains starting, April and May the long rains. June is workable as the dry season starts, November as the short rains arrive.
Dubai	Jan to Apr, and Nov to Dec	6	2	4	May is workable and heating up. June to September are avoid on summer heat, August and September adding humidity. October is workable and still hot at midday.

Dubai carries the most avoid months of the six, four of them in a row, and the fewest workable months, two. That is the calendar saying the short break has a short season. The Garden Route carries nine peak months and nothing to avoid, which is why it shows up in more of the months above than any other trip.

The whole calendar in one grid

The same 72 cells as the home page, in text rather than colour, so the page can be read without a legend. Peak is the window the calendar books around, workable is bookable with a caveat, avoid is a month it steers you elsewhere.

Peak, workable or avoid, month by month, exactly as the home page calendar prints each cell.
The trip	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Cape Town	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Workable	Workable	Workable	Workable	Workable	Peak	Peak	Peak
Kruger	Avoid	Avoid	Avoid	Workable	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Workable	Workable
Garden Route	Peak	Peak	Peak	Workable	Workable	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Workable
Mauritius	Workable	Workable	Workable	Workable	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Workable
Zanzibar	Peak	Peak	Avoid	Avoid	Avoid	Workable	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Workable	Workable
Dubai	Peak	Peak	Peak	Peak	Workable	Avoid	Avoid	Avoid	Avoid	Workable	Peak	Peak

Three things the calendar does not price

What to hold back from any month, including a month with five at peak
The thing	Why it matters	What to do with it
The school diary moves the price, not the cell	School holidays, the Easter week, the September to October safari peak and the December run up price and availability well above the published bands, in months the calendar calls peak and in months it does not	Give the consultant the school term as well as the month. Two weeks apart can be a different trip at the same number of nights
The month does not set the length	A peak month does not tell you how many nights to take. The night count is its own decision, and the per-night figure moves with it	Take the month from this page and the length from how long to go. They answer different questions
Every cell is indicative until confirmed	The calendar is a planning view of the dry and calm windows for each region. It is not a booking engine and it does not see the trade's live availability	Lizanne confirms the live price and the availability against the trade's back-office before anything is booked. Nothing on this page is a quote

If the month is fixed and the destination is open, the choosing guide rules the six in and out on nights and pace. If two trips in one holiday is the idea, the two centre guide pairs the ones whose windows overlap. If the journey is the constraint, getting there prices each trip in days. If the dates are fixed by a public holiday rather than by a season, the six long weekends of 2027 are dated and priced against this same calendar.

What to put in the brief

Send these six lines

The month, or the two months that would work.
The school diary, if it binds the dates.
Who is travelling, and the age of the youngest and the oldest.
The nights you can actually take.
Where you are flying from, if it is not Johannesburg.
A ceiling you will not cross, if you have one.

What comes back, and when

The trips that hold that month, with the closest one first and the reason the others fall away. Where the calendar records a caveat on your month, it comes back with the options rather than after them. That arrives the same day.

The live price and the availability follow once Lizanne has confirmed them with the trade, in writing. A plan that never becomes a booking costs you nothing.

Tell us the month. We will tell you which of the six it holds.

Three lines are enough: the month, the nights, and who is travelling.

Send the month on WhatsApp

Free to the traveller.

The planning lane costs you nothing. A plan that never becomes a booking costs nothing either.
One named human.

Lizanne van Niekerk plans it and books it. She is the person you message on the day of travel.
Indicative until confirmed.

Every number before the booking is a planning range. The binding price is confirmed in writing.

Read what it costs for the three steps and the fee, or the four school windows dated if the trip is fixed by a term calendar.