A Land Rover Defender Virtual Safari Is the Escape From Reality You Need Today
Who needs a plane to get to Africa?
As week two of quarantine nears its close, cabin fever has likely set in, you’re getting snappier with your house-mates, a little more brusque in your daily Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime chats, and all semblance of proper daywear disappeared five days ago. Thankfully, Land Rover has a salve for your wanderlust in the form of video safaris from the all-new Defender launch in Africa. Praise be.
Shot by our colleagues at Carfection, the 2020 Land Rover Defender launch takes us all to Namibia, a country on the southwestern tip of Africa sandwiched between Angola and South Africa. Namibia isn’t the normal launch affair, but neither is the new Defender, an SUV that we’ve all been patiently waiting to see, touch, smell, and drive for what seems like three decades. Actually, there hasn’t been a new Defender since 1983, so you can see why a special locale was needed.
Land Rover also chose Namibia because if you’re going to ascribe a Defender nameplate to any new SUV, it damn-sure should be able to tackle the world’s bushlands, craggy rock faces, and safaris without missing a step. It’s a Defender, it needs to be unbeatable.
The trip, according to Carfection, saw a massive 420-mile trek across the country, to the Skeleton Coast, along ancient riverbeds, through herds of ostriches and giraffes, spying the odd elephant and desiccated corpse of an old Defender, and testing the new Defender to the extreme. The resulting 28-minute film is the perfect distraction to life’s current miseries and will help you deal with how we’re only half-way through the week—I think, I’ve lost track.
As an added bonus to the entire trip and the resulting review, because Namibia has so little light pollution, the star gazing from atop the new Defender is spectacular, as you’ll see in the video above.
We know that the days feel like they’re going on for ages and that the end to our collective hellscape isn’t yet in sight, but take a moment and remember that the world still exists outside your apartment/house’s walls. Beauty, majesty, and adventure will still be there when everything inevitably gets back to normal. We just have to wait a little while longer.
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