Month by month
Matusadona in May
May opens the cool, dry season. The air clears, the rain has gone and the park's own bush camp opens for the year.
If you only want the answer
May is the first properly dry month: cool nights, clear views and mid-season rates, with game starting to settle on the lakeshore. The Jenje bush camp opens for the dry season.
Weather
Very little rain on the model normals and cooler nights than April. The information pack gives May to July an average of 24°C with no rain.
On the thirty-year model normals May averages 24.6°C by day and 14.5°C at night, with 9 mm of rain over 1 wet day.
What a May visit looks like
One May visitor described clear views of the mountains with no bushfire haze and bush that was still quite lush. The park's Jenje bush camp opens for the dry season, which runs to October in the park's pack and to November in another listing.
Rates
Still mid season at Changa, $567 per person per night international, until 31 May.
The lake
Check the Zambezi River Authority's current Lake Kariba reading before you go: on 22 September 2026 the lake stood at 481.13 m, 40.89% of usable storage, far higher than a year earlier, and the level shapes the lakeshore grassland where most of the game is. We have no sourced month-by-month lake cycle, so we do not predict one.