We Want to Shout About Quiet Season From The Rooftops

But we’ll quietly tell you about it here instead.

Micato’s Africa is a year-round destination and every season on safari has its own rhythm that has existed, well, since the beginning of time.

There are times when the ancient safari lands hum with an almost beguiling energy, and others when a gentle hush settles over the savannahs. And from November through March, excluding festive holidays, an even softer cadence prevails.

We call it Quiet Season.

We hasten to add, it’s not quiet because the landscapes or animals or safari experiences are any less vivid, but because there are fewer travellers in the airports, towns, and game lands. It is a marvelous time to safari. Temperatures are moderate, the savannahs are lush, and the sunsets are breathtakingly vivid. During Quiet Season, you will also witness many wildebeest, zebra, and antelope calving, along with elephants and lions, who, not incidentally, give birth year-round.

While the animals, especially the mamas, do most of the work, being in the right place at the right time for this bountiful game viewing is due largely to the oft-described sixth sense of our highly-credentialed Micato Safari Directors. Micato guest Charlotte Kohl remembers the moment on the Serengeti plains when she, with her Micato Safari Director and Driver-Guide in tow, came across a mother Thomson’s gazelle with a newborn, spindly-legged calf wobbling on tiny hooves, its coat damp from birth.

“I had never seen so many baby animals at one time,” says Charlotte. “It was incredible.”

Families often find Quiet Season aligns beautifully with school breaks, making it a natural time for shared adventure. And while it bears repeating that our safari lands are bountiful year-round, more couples are discovering Quiet Season, given the excellent chance of seeing baby animals and, if the odds are in your favour, an actual birth, like the one witnessed by two of our guests, on a private Micato Custom Safari for their wedding anniversary.

Acting on an insider tip, the couple’s Micato Safari Director whisked them to the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater, where a zebra was very much in labour. For the next 25 minutes, they were the only witnesses to what was, by every measure, miraculous.

In the couple’s words, the experience was “the gift that will keep on giving forever.”

The birth took place in November, one of Quiet Season’s best-kept secrets.

Until now.