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Land Rover in Belize: Split Personalities
You have to hand it to Land Rover. For the company that makes arguably the sexist SUVs on the planet, they know how to get down and dirty when they need to! It is comparable to meeting that posh uptown girl at the art gallery on Saturday who morphs into a rowdy soccer hooligan on Sunday. Hard to believe they are they same person, but they are. This is how I see Land Rover and their three staple SUVs -- Range Rover, LR3 and Range Rover Sport. All are different in urban design and styling characteristics, yet kick some major butt off-road!
The setting was the Central American country of Belize. An amazingly picturesque place as native Belizeans would even admit, and full of beautiful people, sites and is a wonderful place to visit. The most amazing aspects of the country are its history and culture. Belize is home to thousands of Mayan ruins, which date back to a very, very long time ago. Through the large dense jungle (which is actually most of the country), you come to historic sites where civilizations thrived many years ago. Like other ancient civilizations, the Maya were acute in astrology, math, and engineering. You have to realize that most structures built by man today could not last the hundreds of years these ruins have survived.
Belize’s history, location and abundant off-road opportunities were some of the reasons that Land Rover decided to fly a handful of journalists out to test drive their vehicles. Land Rover is brave and was not going to take us to Anywhere, USA and build a man-made off-road course that is tailored for their SUVs to perform well. They took a chance in elements that were very unpredictable and even unforgivable at times.
 I arrived in Belize on a muggy day in the middle of the rainy season. I was coming from Washington, DC where muggy is the norm during the summer months, so I was not too bothered. The East Coast of the US had actually just gotten hit by record rainstorms and I thought I knew what a rain storm was. Though I just missed most of the rainy days Belize had been the victim of record rainstorms of its own. Flying in, it looked as though 60% of the country was under water or near flooded. Now that’s a storm!
Land Rover and its team of off-road driving instructors seemed unfazed by the challenge of the elements, and looked forward to getting us out in it. I was reunited with the same instructors that had me rock crawling in Moab, Utah a year ago testing the Range Rover Sport. The Sport surprised me with its off-road ability, being that it is more on-road oriented than its older brothers. It wowed me then and it got another chance to show me something new.
 As mentioned, Belize was bombarded with torrential rain days earlier. My first night there it rained all night; and I do mean all night! Our accommodations where at a beautiful mountain resort called Five Sisters, built next to a river were five scenic waterfalls flowed. The area was so magnificent that the rain did not bother me a bit; it really made for a great night as I heard the rain bouncing off the many tree leaves surrounding the cabana. The next morning we jumped right into the thick of things to say the least. Our crew took an early drive along the Belizean roads (80% unpaved) to the Maya ruins of Caracol. Exquisite, preserved ruins were excavated in 2000 after hundreds of years under soil from erosion and the winds. Getting there was like a walk through tulips for the Land Rovers, but the best was yet to come. After lunch was when the adventure began.
We got on the road about noon and headed to Seven Mile, a road carved for tree loggers to get in and out of the jungle. With the rain, the road was a mess! Mud a quarter of the way up your leg, trees literally reaching out from the sides, bugs everywhere. The catch is that the Land Rovers were like frogs in the mud, navigating their way through with total efficiency. All of the Land Rover SUVs were pretty much stock except for 19” off-road tires and front mounted winches (from Land Rover) that are a necessary piece of equipment when going off-road. This is the amazing thing about these vehicles -- they do not need to be transformed into off-road monsters to get the job done. You can literally drive from your local dealer through Texas and Mexico, and on to Belize for a good time!
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Land Rover chose the venue, but Mother Nature dictated the pace. It took us ten hours to drive the seven miles! Some may think that this sucks (see the pictures accompanying this review and you should come to respect what I am saying). Of course with the guidance of our instructors, it takes a special technique to wade through mud and debris of this magnitude. It is a mix of equipment, skill, patience and technique.
As the evening came, it was pitch black in the middle of a jungle filled with Jaguars (I’m not talking cars here!), insects, frogs, and Scorpions (one got into Land Rover and crawled right past my head, before I calmly jumped out of the car). Reflecting on the entire day, I would not have had it any other way because I learned something about the vehicle and about myself while enduring such an adverse situation. I left the jungle at midnight tired, but with a smile on my face, knowing we just conquered Seven Mile under disastrous conditions.
Let me be clear, 90% of Land Rover buyers would not put their vehicles through what we did in Belize. Most owners do not even know that the beautiful machines they own are even capable of such endeavors. The 10% that do are the ones who are getting the benefit of the entire premium price they paid for their Land Rover and are more than happy with the results.
Range Rover, LR3, and Range Rover Sport all out-performed my expectations. This is where the split personalities come into play. One would not think that such refined, elegantly styled vehicles would be able to handle themselves in the way they did. I tip my hat to the Land Rover engineers and driving instructors that made Belize the experience it was. Cheers to split personalities and the Land Rovers that drive them!
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