By Christopher Tracy
Yes, that’s a real Mi-24 Hind helicopter. The Algerian Air Force uses them to patrol its borders with Libya and Niger. A helicopter is a great vehicle for far-reaching expeditions, but that just gets you in the door and you need to be on the ground to push deeper. The world knows that when you’re ready for expedition travel you take a Land Cruiser, Land Rover, Patrol, or Pajero.
You do not take a Hummer H2.
At least, that’s what we would’ve guessed. But someone has done just that. They’ve spent time in Algeria traveling with Geko Expeditions (you will have to translate the website) in an H2.
Geko posted a teaser from this trip, and it includes a location known as the Hidden Grave. If you pause at the 14-second mark, you’ll see the H2.
Hopefully, they post more from the Algeria trip because I want to see the big brute Hummer dominating in places where only Cruisers, Defenders, and Patrols normally travel.
Geko Expeditions is the kind of company I’d want to travel with once I have fully kitted vehicle. Another option is to have a crap ton of money and rent a 70-Series Land Cruiser from Geko for a trip through the Okavango in Africa.
The film below is my favorite of theirs. It’s from Iceland in 2017. The Geko guides look like they use Nissan Patrols for most of their trips, but in some places have 70-Series Land Cruisers as well. In Iceland, the guides are in the Patrols and the rest of the group brought their own vehicles: Toyota Troopy, Toyota Prado, Land Rover Defender, and a Mitsubishi Pajero.
There is another video from Russia that will make you love Geko even more. This trip features another Troopy, a Hilux, a Defender, the usual Patrols, and a section of the world that not very many of us have seen.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/257026241
The locations listed here are big tasks. And those Patrols are growing on me.
Jeff Glucker
So how much longer before H2s are fully depreciated and become backwoods beaters?
They’re not already?
Most of the ones on my local Craigslist are still over $10k. I’m waiting for around $5k.
Wow, maybe I’m overestimating how old they are, but I’d have thought those things would be deeply unfashionable and near LeMons fodder by now.
By way of comparison, a 4X4 Chevy Tahoe, even the Z71 versions (which aren’t all that different underneath), of the same vintage starts at a little under $5k. So yeah, there is still a big premium for a H2. A Bro Tax if you will.
Here in Dallas these are still hugely popular. I probably see one a week.
As for prices – most are well over $10K on Craigslist here
https://dallas.craigslist.org/search/cto?query=h2+hummer
Awesome videos! That’s my idea of the perfect retirement, but probably not what my wife means by “traveling in our golden years”.
The Patrol is very cool, but it’s the Cruiser that does it for me. I’ve never cared for the H2– we had one at work that I drove (admittedly nothing that would truly test its off-road chops) and I was hugely unimpressed. Looked and felt like it was molded and assembled at a Playskool factory. I’d take a Wrangler UL over it, any day.
I went to Camp Jeep in 2004 with my ’04 TJ. The highlight was a guy high centering his H2 on a stump as he exited a parking lot incorrectly and having to be pulled off by a Rubicon. I’m assuming the H2 is better offroad than someone who can’t see a stump. But it was priceless for our time there.
The H2 amazed me that something that huge on the outside could have so little room inside. I swear they have less room on the inside than a K5 Blazer.
Geko does an excellent presentation (still wondering though – why add music to these videos?) but it is fairly obvious, as you say, that this form of travel is one for “dessert pensioners”, the early retirees and well off.
I’m just going to leave this link here again for the rest of us:
https://no.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g293948-d15099981-Reviews-UAZ_Buhanka_Rental-Bishkek.html