Elephant Plains vs. SKukuza Camp
 

My husband and I have a free stopover in Johannesburg in December on our way to seeing my in-laws in Tanzania for Christmas. I figured why not take advantage of that and do a quick trip into the Kruger Park area for some game viewing.
Wildwings Safari does a 'Quickie Safari'-they pick you up from the airport-transport you to Skukuza Camp, you spend two nights doing games drives and they take you back. Needless to say, since our trip will be so short anyways, this convenience is quite appealing. However, upon reading about the Skukuzu Camp/Area, I am not super excited anymore.
I am much more excited about a couple nights in SabiSands at Elephant Plains.
My question to all you experts is...given my timeframe, and the time of year, is it worth the hassle of arranging flights and transfers, as well as spending an extra $500 to go to Elephant Plains for such a short period of time? We fly in at 6pm on Dec15th, and out at 4pm on Dec19th
Any input would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers, Tanya

Hi,

I spent 3 nights at Elephant Plains in June and have also done a lot of Kruger holidays around December. I would recomment Elephant Plains over Skukuza for a short break. Elephant Plains is excellent - we saw leopard on every game drive all-in-all a wonderful experience.

You could potentially fly to Hoedspruit and arrange with Elephant Plains to do the transfers, or look into the cost of charter flights to Elephant Plains (they have costs on their website of flights to their airfield). The airfield is around 5-10 minutes from the lodge.

I was given a strong endorsement second hand on Elephant Plains by a Swiss whale researcher & wildlife photographer who I met on a recent non-Africa trip. She had about 3 or 4 days at EP and wanted to stay longer and would go back. She has to leave Switzerland to do the whale research, obviously.

i would definately go for EP!
time sounds sufficient and worthwhile to to that side trip.
btw
instead of flying you can also be transferred by service depending on budget.

as you fly in at 06pm you have to stay overnight in joburg/airport vicinity (have a look at albatross guesthouse/portfolio collection) and leave in the early morning hours for EP so that you arrive around midday, unpack, relax and start with the pm gamedrive.
on 19 you can be picked up after a short morning drive and drive or fly back on fed air.

to me it sounds reasonable enough.

div

I guess it depends on how much relative solitude is important to you. I was at Skukuza in April (for one night) when it was totally full and still enjoyed myself, and saw wild dogs. Skukuza is a (human) zoo but I've had some interesting sightings there.

Then again, I'm too cheap to pay for the private places--just not my thing. I would pay for a flight rather than be land-transferred up there from Joberg, though, with such a short time frame.

Have you thought about Pilanesburg? It's closer to Joberg.

Another endorsement for Elephant Plains. My trip report from last summer provides lots of details.