Magic and freedom for a blogger abroad

Peru, what a beautiful country: desert, mountains, jungle. So many amazing places to shoot pictures of the new Land Rover Discovery. For two weeks in October I enjoyed living the life of a live blogger/reporter for the Land Rover Experience Tour (LET). And to report live, you need to be live – that means being online, wherever you are.

In the bigger cities like Huancayo and Cusco we had Wi-Fi, more or less. But even this was sometimes not usable. 3G or LTE might be an option, but neither was available in the Nazca Desert, nor in the Andes Mountains. I’m glad Land Rover and Inmarsat prepared a communications package for us which we, in the end, even used in the cities.

With two different devices, either a small, router-like BGAN or its bigger brother, Global Xpress, we could connect to a satellite anywhere. With bandwidth bigger than the hotel Wi-Fi or the 3G of my phone, I and the LET photographer Craig Pusey had ample opportunity to put all our content online.

Each evening I posted a blog and up to 10 pictures. It feels a bit like magic, sitting between the Pacific Ocean and one of the most beautiful deserts in the world, uploading pictures, communicating with the team of Land Rover Germany and – I couldn’t not do it – chatting with friends and family abroad. What explorers and adventurers are normally used to – a strictly limited amount of megabytes or one phone call a day – was the complete opposite for this tour. I could upload whenever I wanted to easily and quickly!

So thank you, Inmarsat, for making my blog possible. Thanks to this sponsorship, the families, friends and colleagues of all the participants and winners of the LET always knew we were safe and having the trip of our lives, and fans and other sponsors of the tour stayed up to date and could use our content.

Now back home, I am already looking forward to the next trip with Land Rover and Inmarsat!